86WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEMexperiences back to academia, serving first as a professor and then as
an associate dean of engineering in Oman’s top university.
Al- Rumhy understood too well how energy subsidies had metasta-
sized throughout Gulf society and how crucial it was to purge them
from the politician’s sheaf of patronage tools. The incendiary effects on
demand— and the untold billions required to increase fossil fuel pro-
duction so that subsidies could be maintained— meant that continuing
these giveaways was a fools’ errand.
“I think we have a serious problem,” al- Rumhy said in his plenary
address in the conference hall. “We are wasting too much energy in the
region. And the barrels that we are consuming are becoming a threat
now, for our region particularly.” The minister’s call for restraint must
have grated on the buoyant mood at ADIPEC. Al- Rumhy pointed to the
subsidies underpinning expectations for “endless growth” that made the
trade show so spectacular and described these policies as the enemy of
any sensible Gulf technocrat. Prior to al- Rumhy’s call, few political fig-
ures ever dared attack such a key pillar of political stability for the Gulf
ruling families. “What is really destroying us right now is subsidies,” the
Omani minister boomed. “We simply need to raise the price of petrol
and electricity. In some countries in our region electricity is free and you
leave on your air conditioning for the whole summer when you go on
holiday. That is really a crime. Our cars are getting bigger, our consump-
tion is getting bigger and the price is almost free. So you need to send a
signal to the pockets of the public.”^1
Energy technocrats in the Gulf had quietly been making similar state-
ments for years; al- Rumhy’s 2013 speech made the open discussion of
dismantling energy subsidies politically palatable. Besides challenging
the standard governing calculus, al- Rumhy’s quest to rein in demand
stood at odds with four decades of academic work on the rules of gover-
nance in his own country and those like it. If raising prices would end
the long- running feast on domestic energy products, why don’t rulers
simply go for the quick fix? Gulf regimes have the autonomy to enact
policy without consulting their citizens; shouldn’t Kuwait’s ruling emir
simply impose on his subjects an 1,800 percent increase in their electric-
ity rates (the amount by which current prices must rise to reflect actual
cost) and be done with it? The problem is, according to rentier theory,