They are stereotyped for their wealth, over-the-top weddings, and preoccupation with status symbols.
"It was an enormous amount of money in the wealth transfer over the period of the agreement.
Whereas much of the oil revenue generated during the boom times of the 1970s was exhausted on a combination of necessary infrastructure projects and somewhat dubious investment schemes, the wealth generated over the last decade has been better managed.
It has been suffering from a redistribution of the wealth upward over the past 30 years that is no longer available to finance those means.
Years of partisanship over country, privilege over sharing the wealth, and bureaucracy over democracy sent them looking elsewhere.
He also said on his website that the recession was largely "a result of the imbalance in the distribution of wealth over the last eight years and an absence of oversight and accountability".
Corporations and wealthy individuals have been able to increase their share of the state's wealth over the last two decades often at the expense of the greater good.
It pushes the company's wealth over the £100bn mark, and is the biggest discovery yet under the two-year stewardship of chief executive Tony Hayward, for whom this is something of a personal triumph.
Or scan one of the graphs that economists use to chart the distribution of wealth over the last hundred years.
