I have come to think of such terms when heard coning from them to mean the continued domination by their true constituents, the money families. They have a long history of selling out the people that runs all the way back to the founding.

They could be self sufficient with oil and everything else, but the money families want to have a method of extraction from the countries that are currently selling the oil. Got to have that method of enslavement, and not much value to exploit from sand.

I suspect that when they begin saying they want to develop something, it has already been developed and they are working on something way more sophisticated.