When Britain’s largest ever export agreement turns out to be part fighter jets, part oil barrels, and part money-laundering scheme, you know Shell and BP won’t be far from the action. The Al-Yamamah arms deal wasn’t just about Tornados flying to Riyadh. It was also about crude oil flowing to London, and then through Shell and BP into Western banking systems. The real WMD? “Wealth Made Disappear.”
The Basics: What Was Al-Yamamah?
Al-Yamamah (“The Dove”) was the name given to a series of gargantuan arms contracts between the UK and Saudi Arabia starting in 1985. Britain promised Saudi Tornado fighters, Hawk trainers, missiles, ships, and infrastructure. In exchange, the Saudis delivered up to 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day — routed through the British government. BAE Systems (then British Aerospace) was the prime contractor.
Oh, look! The same oil giants who spent decades belching carbon into the atmosphere and cashing in on climate chaos now want to be the heroes. Shell, Equinor, and TotalEnergies have announced that their shiny new Norwegian CO2 storage facility is “ready to go”—as if they didn’t spend the last century fueling the problem.
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