For many years, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council have followed an oil-based development model. The black stuff has been, as LSE economist Sophie Olver-Ellis put it, the "elixir of life" for many of the region's economies.
This has been particularly true for Kuwait. Oil has transformed this small nation on the Arabian Peninsula from a prosperous trading port into an oil-exporting powerhouse with a highly developed, albeit non-diverse, economy.