SAUDI Arabia's King Salman Abdulaziz Al Saud’s ongoing grand sweep through East Asia, accompanied by a retinue of more than a thousand princes and courtiers, revives memories of the glory days of the oil states when Gulf sheikhs bestowed Rolex watches upon even casual visitors and, on a whim, could point in a direction and order six-lane highways built for a hundred miles.
Those days are over, of course. Shale gas, new finds in Russia and elsewhere, have depressed oil prices and dented the hubris and purchasing power of oil kingdoms.