http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oi...ens-death-2011-05-02?link=MW_home_latest_news
While bin Ladenâs al Qaeda organization âstill exists and future strikes remain a risk ⦠reality is Al Queda has not focused on oil supply/transportation targets over the past decade, so [we] donât think bin Ladenâs death should have significant impact on crude (up or down),â the Houston-based energy research firm said in a comment to clients.
------------
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/05/02/cruickshank.osama.bin.laden/index.html?hpt=C2
CNN: What will happen to al Qaeda now?
Cruickshank: I think that in the short term, there could be a spike in activity, with more people being recruited, because he's going to be a martyr figure in the short term. But in the medium term, they're really going to feel the loss. He was very good at coming up with messages that would unify al Qaeda, for instance in the 1990s focusing on the United States, that was a way to unify all these different factions, different nationalities and agendas -- and picking on issues such as the cartoon controversy to unify al Qaeda. Now without bin Laden, they will likely lose some of that unity.
Coming after a backlash against al Qaeda in the Muslim world -- the emergence of a powerful critique of al Qaeda from fellow Jihadists for killing so many Muslims and civilians -- and the Arab spring that has reduced al Qaeda to virtual irrelevance in much of the Arab world and removed grievances they were able to exploit, this is a hammer blow to al Qaeda.
The threat of al Qaeda won't go away anytime soon, as the thwarting of a serious al Qaeda plot against Germany last week demonstrated. Bin Laden's ideology has been spread too wide for that. But without the guiding hand of its founder, the al Qaeda organization may now begin to unravel.