RIYADH, March 24: There is no question of Saudi Arabia engineering an oil market crash, Dr Fatih Chalabi, the executive director at the Centre for global Energy Studies, and a former Opec acting secretary general told this correspondent in his office in Central London last week.

The reports that Saudi Arabia is about to engineer oil market collapse so as to contain its over-zealous neighbour, kept echoing in Zurich and London, over the last week or so, as people in the energy fraternity seemed deeply interested in finding out the truth on the issue on the sidelines of an industry conference.

Saudi Arabia's growing fear of Iranian hegemony in the Middle East may be driving the world's largest crude oil exporter to prepare a more aggressive long-term political oil strategy that could subvert an Iranian ascendancy, Western media has been arguing now for months.

Under a new, accelerated production programme, the kingdom could increase its spare oil drilling capacity to at least 3 million barrels a day by 2011, up from around 2 million now. Western intelligence experts estimate Iran might have the capability to develop nuclear weapons by then.

Additional spare capacity could give the Saudis greater leverage as a political tool. These recent developments in Saudi Arabia's plans to boost production, and briefings by Nawaf Obaid, a former consultant to the then Saudi ambassador to the US, have raised questions about whether the country is considering new strategic oil options to counter Iranian influence in the region.

Riyadh and Tehran are not only the two regional political heavyweights; the two are also the world’s largest oil producers and exporters. Both have strong interests in keeping the oil markets stable and a fair return on their oil exports.

Gone are the days, when Riyadh and Tehran used to lead their own factions within the Opec. On a practical level, they are today contributing positively towards hammering out a consensus on issues of mutual interest within the oil cartel.

However, over the last few months a twist was being added, especially in the western press, over the conflicting targets of these two major oil producing countries towards oil markets.

In the mid 80s, Riyadh in close association with Washington, applied the same strategy in order to provide catalytic impetus to the downfall and in fact elimination of the Soviet empire from the global map.

Some now, therefore, argue that Riyadh has the capacity to sustain any such oil market crash much longer than Iran. On the other hand, any oil market crash would damage and destroy the Iranian economy, restraining in the process the growth of the Persian influence in the Arab hinterland.

However, one thing seemed certain. Indeed, there was a vested interest too in the entire set of argument. If oil markets crashed, oil prices in the gasoline stations would go down and gas guzzlers could continue in the current mode much longer.

But is this argument sustainable? Would Riyadh be ready to perform a literal hara-kiri?

For Riyadh to even think of engineering any such crash would not be less than suicidal, even a lay man could well understand today. It is Saudi Arabia’s sole source of income. To meet its current budget, the kingdom needs this income.

“It’s all rubbish. I had heard a lot of similar things during the decade long Iran-Iraq war, while I was in Baghdad. Even then it was postulated by some that Riyadh was engineering a market price collapse so as to cripple Tehran. Nothing of that sort happened then. It is just crazy to think on these lines,” argued Dr Chalabi.