A Dhahran, Saudi Arabia-based shipping company, Namma Cargoes, said that over the last three weeks an increasing number of Americans and British from Aramco have packed valuables to send abroad.
In the last 10 years, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, a militant Islamic movement, has organized attacks against US facilities in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and East Africa, and planned last month's attacks on New York and Washington, US officials said.
Saudi experts say there's growing potential for violence in Saudi Arabia because the country's population is increasingly disaffected with the ruling royal family.
"If there is anyone bin Laden hates more than the US, it's the Saudi royal family," said James Akins, who was US ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1973 to 1975. "There is an extremely real possibility of terrorism" in Saudi Arabia.
King Fahd, 79, is in bad health, and his next in line, Prince Abdullah, is only four years younger. Saudi Arabia's population has almost tripled during the last 20 years to close to 15 million nationals and 6 million foreign workers.
A population boom has outpaced economic growth for the last two decades, cutting per capita income to under US$7,000 last year from about US$25,000 in 1980.
The government is producing jobs for only an estimated 60 percent of the 200,000 young men entering the labor market each year.
An attack on Saudi Arabia's oil installations would be the best way to hurt the royal family, experts said. Oil accounts for 40 percent of the Saudi economy and provides 75 percent of government revenue, according to Central Intelligence Agency estimates.
"There's a growing population, and especially those of Yemeni descent have no loyalty to the [royal] family," said Loik le Floch-Prigent, a former head of French oil company Elf Aquitaine SA, now part of Total Fina Elf SA.
"Meanwhile, the family's supported by the Americans, who are increasingly unpopular. Something's got to explode."
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