mining boom finished, page-18

The USA has its biggest airforce base in the world in Qatar. Its a very stable kingdom and has no chance of an arab spring uprising.

The last time I looked oil producers didnt give a fig if the country they were operating in was a democracy. In fact the most successful oil producing countries (ie the ones with the biggest projects going into production) were nearly all dictatorships or police states like Qatar.

I think that US oil companies sleep very well at night operating in Qatar, knowing that the US military is there to back them up on every small quarrel.

Its a good question cgt, and I should add that the people there were high level bankers and debt lenders, not equity market people. From an Australian perspective it looks like oil stocks are rebounding well regardless of location, and I dont think the market really cares about risk at present and all the huffing and puffing by Bob Brown isnt going to change that James Price point will go ahead for Woodside. The change in the wind indicates to me that stock market investors should be continuing to chase risk, but that people actually havent to count the beans on billion dollar projects are filling their pants at the A$ and every extra mile of green tape that this government piles on it, and they remain nervous that labor could do something even crazier like raise the taxes on the oil projects in a desperate effort to keep funding their big ticket promises.

I cant answer specifically where shangri la is, but for global asset managers Australia's risk is rising and while the RBA remains stubbornly adhered to a high interest rate policy resulting in a strong A$ relative to the rest of the world we are going to see projects canned.