Saudi Arabia outlined ambitious plans on Monday to move into industries ranging from information technology to health care and tourism, as it sought to convince international investors it can cope with an era of cheap oil.

A meeting and presentation at a luxury Riyadh hotel was held against a backdrop of low oil prices pressuring the kingdom's currency and saddling it with an annual state budget deficit of almost $100 billion - the biggest economic challenge for Riyadh in well over a decade.

Top Saudi officials said they would reduce the kingdom's dependence on oil and public sector employment. Growth and job creation would shift to the private sector, with state spending helping to jump-start industries in the initial stage.

"It's going to switch from simple quantitative growth based on commodity exports to qualitative growth that is evenly distributed" across the economy, said Khalid al-Falih, chairman of national oil giant Saudi Aramco.

Over 2,400 people, including local and foreign officials, business, consultants and academics, registered for the event, staged by the government's investment promotion agency.

Commerce and industry minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah said Saudi Arabia had been a victim of the "Dutch disease" - a condition in which the oil sector had crowded out other parts of the economy - but was now working to correct that.

Under the reforms, parts of the national health care system would be converted into independent commercial companies, officials said.

Participants in the conference, including the chief executives of U.S. aerospace firm Lockheed Martin and Pepsico, discussed subjects ranging from how to foster entrepreneurs to ways of developing dynamic cities and increasing the role of Saudi women in the business world.

Obstacles

Thomson ReutersSaudi Arabia's Commerce and Industry Minister Al-Rabiah, Russia's Economic Development Minister Ulyukaev and New Zealand's Trade Minister Groser attend the G20 Trade Ministers meeting in Sydney in 2014.

The heavy presence of foreign business representatives suggested many saw opportunities in the Saudi strategy. Although Riyadh is burning through its foreign assets to cover the budget gap, it still had $628 billion in November, enough to finance years of new projects.

Some participants expressed doubt about the scale of the planned change in a country where about two-thirds of local workers are in the public sector, preferring it to more rigorous private employment.

There is little tradition of entrepreneurship in the world's biggest oil exporter, and financial and legal systems have not been set up to encourage it.

"The transition away from being a rentier state is not a comfortable one,” said David Chaudron, managing partner of the California-based Organized Change Consultancy, which works with Saudi companies.

"They’re trying. But the fundamental question is: will their trying bear enough fruit before the downside of the current system hits? Or is it a day late and a dollar short? Will the forces of change ultimately be enough to overcome the inertia of the current system? I don’t know.”

The U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Joseph Westphal, pointed to risks in administering the plans.

"Saudi Arabia has to have a government system that is adaptable," he said, adding that top officials would need to delegate decisions and authorities would have to be willing to take risks in the recognition that there would be some failures.

REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstU.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Saudi Arabia's King Salman after their meeting alongside the G20 summit at the Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, November 15, 2015.

Nevertheless, many participants at the conference recognized that strong political momentum had now built up behind the reform plans, many of which had previously been discussed for years without result.

The momentum has increased since King Salman took the throne in January last year and created a powerful Council of Economic and Development Affairs chaired by his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The government is believed to have hired hundreds of Western consultants to work on the plans.

Falih said that in addition to using its spending to start industries such as shipbuilding, Saudi Aramco would use its extensive educational and vocational training program to help create the human capital needed for the transformation.

"Saudi Aramco will be a bridge for a transition away from itself," he said.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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US shale-oil producers can claim a big chunk of responsibility for the oil crash.

Their drilling method of using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to tap oil from shale formations has boomed over the last several.

And the primary reason is because fracking is cheaper and more flexible than traditional methods of drilling for oil.

Said another way, it is an ideal business for speculation.

As a result, largely US-based fracking players have brought abundant new supply into the market after taking aggressive steps to unlock oil in US shale formations, ultimately creating the glut that has sent oil prices down 70% in the last year and a half.

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(EIA) In a report from The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard published Sunday, Evans-Pritchard cited commentary from Daniel Yergin, an energy expert and founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, who spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. And two sentences from Yergin succinctly tell the whole story of how shale came to dominate the oil market.

"It takes $10 [billion] and five to ten years to launch a deep-water project. It takes $10 [million] and just 20 days to drill for shale," Yergin said.

And so even though shale producers have been hit hard with the crash in prices — and start to get hit harder still by bankruptcies, layoffs, and the like — the fact that they can drill so quickly andcheaply puts them at a huge advantage to producers that use other costlier methods (notably OPEC members).

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(FRED)  And America has an abundance of shale formations.

Yergin added that private-equity firms and hedge funds are on standby with a $60 billion chest of cash to buy up bankrupt shale drillers' assets. Such investments would be a significant bailout for the industry and could mean that production surges even higher if oil prices recover at all.

Right now, the Energy Information Administration is forecasting a decline by 700,000 barrels per day in US oil production for 2016, and 300,000 in 2017.

Some analysts think this shortfall is the only thing that can drive oil prices higher. This weekend, we noted comment from Citi arguing that with OPEC bent on maintaining production levels, falling shale production is the only thing that can correct the imbalance between oil supply and demand.

However, Yergin's reminder of just how nimble shale technology shows how fracking's ability to seize market opportunity in the face of either falling or rising prices shows how the frackers took control of the market.  

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Who is Zoom? Well, if Team Flash could figure that out now, it might significantly shorten their season.

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Boston Globe columnist and ESPN "Around the Horn" panelist Bob Ryan was suspended by the cable network for calling former Warriors coach and current ESPN commentator Mark Jackson a "Bible-pounding phony."

Ryan made the critical comments on Dan Le Batard's radio show on Jan. 6, and hasn't taken an opportunity to walk them back, adding, "I'm sorry, but it's the truth. And I can't believe they took him back on that broadcast. Oh my God. He's a con man, and he's done very well at it. I'll give him credit for being a great one."

Ryan did not appear on any of ESPN's programs from Jan. 6 until Sunday because he was serving a suspension, TheBigLead.com reported. Ryan told the Web site that his comments about Jackson were an "intemperate, foolish outburst that I regret. I was treated very nicely by the company, and have told them that I will not do anything like this again to be out of their good graces."

Jackson, a co-pastor and licensed minister, was allegedly extorted by a former stripper and in 2012 admitted to his involvement in an extramarital affair.

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Blake Griffin has missed the Clippers last 15 games with a partial quad tear, but as Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times told us in a PBT Podcast, he was expected to return Tuesday night when the Clippers visited the Pacers.

But he’s going to be out a while longer, according to Marc Stein and Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.

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A couple days ago, it was announced that Steven Moffat is stepping down as the Doctor Who showrunnerTorchwood, which starred John Barrowman as  the cocky and immortal Captain Jack Harkness. 

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How different is the dynamic between Barry and this Reverse-Flash (Matt Letscher) since he’s from an earlier timeline?
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In mid-January, with Bernie Sanders surging in the polls in Iowa, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah decided it was time to formally introduce Sanders to its audience. Sanders officially declared his candidacy this past May and has been squarely in the public eye for months now, his positions, politics, unkempt hair, and Brooklyn accent dissected all over cable news and razzed by every late-night showin the land (including The Daily Show). Still, Noah supposed its viewers “might be wondering [about] this rising new, yet old, force in the Democratic Party.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — Mother Nature was an unexpected guest for a Manhattan couple's wedding and her gift was a doozy: a record-breaking blizzard that made their wedding a memorable one — even if it was a day late.

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Listen to music for 10 to 15 minutes before you start working to boost your productivity.Since I was gifted a new pair of headphones this past holiday season, I've developed a habit of listening to music while I work.

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Ted Brown, a graphics producer for ESPN who also worked on ABCsports programming including ABC’s “College Football Primetime” and the National Championship Game, died on Sunday from a heart attack while in Australia for the network’s coverage of the Australian Open. He was 36.

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A firefighter at a refinery owned by China National Offshore Oil Corp. in the Dayawan Economic and Technical Development zone in Huizhou city, Guangdong province, in 2011.If you are concerned about the declining price of oil, you should probably know what China — the world's second-largest oil consumer — has been doing with its oil industry for the past year.

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BERLIN, Germany — A Donald Trump presidency could seriously damage the United States' relationship with its top allies, according to political officials and media observers in Europe.

On Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron voiced his disapproval with Trump, telling Mic in an exclusive interview that the Republican frontrunner is making "the work we need to do to confront and defeat the extremists more difficult." Those comments came on the heels of a British parliament debate to ban Trump from entering the United Kingdom altogether, after a petition on the topic garnered more than 570,000 signatures.

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By Ginger Gibson and Steve Holland

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WASHINGTON (AP) — As the first voting nears in the presidential race, most Americans have little or no confidence in the federal government to confront what they see as the country's most important priorities, according to a national survey.

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