CALL IT THE world's most important filling station. The complex of piers, artificial islands and offshore moorings on the finger of land curling into the Gulf at Ras Tanura is the biggest oil-export terminal of the world's biggest oil exporter. Tankers appear out of the haze to suck up the crude oil and refined fuels that, these days, mostly power Asian economies. For decades pumping oil and gas was all Gulf states had to do to build skyscrapers and shopping malls, and provide citizens with enough benefits to keep them quiet. Every bust in the oil cycle brought calls for diversification; with every boom, the talk faded.
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