Oil

Guess what? There's oil in Abu Dhabi. The Emirate of Abu Dhabi (which doesn't contain Dubai) has 95% of the UAE's oil and 92% of it's natural gas. That's right, Dubai may have more fancy buildings than Abu Dhabi, but who do they come to when the bill arrives? Not only that, Abu Dhabi has 9% of the world's proven oil reserves and 5% of it's proven natural gas. That's right. You want to fill up that SUV? There's a good chance that what you're putting into your vehicle came from Abu Dhabi.

Because Abu Dhabi is oil wealthy, gasoline price are slightly lower than they are in other regions of the world. That translates to bigger, oil-guzzling cars. In addition, fuel prices are set, so when there's an increase as there was a few months ago, people start complaining. The natural question is: How low is low? Recently the price per gallon went from U.S. $1.40 to U.S. $1.56. While not so cheap that you don't have to care, it's cheap enough that filling up an SUV doesn't seem so bad.