Wait a minute. I’m having whiplash.
I thought the presumptive Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) was a ruthless tyrant who placed roughly half his family under investigation for treason and ordered—or at least encouraged—the murder of respected Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Okay, Khashoggi wasn’t respected by everybody. He did other things, including hanging out with Osama bin Laden, adamantly defending Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian terrorism, and generally advocating for the eradication of the state of Israel, but still, murder’s murder.
MBS is clearly a leader who gets what he wants and what he wants right now, from all indications, is the end of the Biden administration and all it entails.
And why wouldn’t he?
He doesn’t live on Mars and he sees what we all see.
From day one, President Joe Biden and whoever is advising and/or managing him have been waging a non-stop war against fossil fuels.
MBS also has seen the ensuing world economic decline combined with a pandemic—undoubtedly exacerbated by the policies of that same administration—that has led to a lessened demand for oil.
Along with that he has no doubt noticed Biden’s near-religious devotion to the electric car and the many virtue-signaling Americans and Europeans who buy into that.
In what world could all that be good news for Saudi Arabia, virtually tied with the United States for the number one oil producer on the planet at 10,835,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2021?
MBS, and most of the rest of OPEC+, of which he is virtually Capo di tutti capi, I imagine, are undoubtedly not amused.
What they have been watching is a Western self-immolation.
OPEC+ members Venezuela, Russia, and Iran must in some way be saying “bring it on,” but they too will be losing customers, not a great long-range policy.
So on the morning of Oct. 5, they declared a cutback of two million bpd, sending a message.
It was heard.
Stocks plunged and pump prices jumped even before the announcement.
This was followed by what was reported to be a respite because the price per barrel was frozen by the cartel in some areas—we’ll see for how long—causing what proved to be a very temporary bump in the bear stock market.
A day later, pump prices jumped again.
Clearly, other reasons exist for OPEC+’s decision, but, given the timing, the Saudis obviously want Biden and his crew out.
Biden, of course, had begged the Saudis in July to open the spigot, but to no avail. He did this all the while consistently dialing back our own petroleum resources for what I suppose he thinks is environmental science.
Then, paradoxically, as his poll numbers plunged, he drained the U. S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves just to lower pump prices for the election in an era when our country has powerful and very active adversaries in China and Russia.
The Saudis obviously saw all this as well, yet another reason to undermine our irresponsible leader from abroad.
So they have acted.
Is this fair, intervening in another country’s elections?
No, but everybody does it.
We could make a list, from the Iranians’ eternal (and probably justified) complaint about the CIA and others preventing Mohammed Mosadegh from replacing the Shah and, more recently, the determined (but failed) attempts by allies of President Barack Obama to block the reelection of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There are plenty of others, many of which we don’t know about. No doubt it is going on now in many quarters, more powerfully than ever via the infiltration of social media.
Will it work in the Saudi’s case? We shall know, again to some extent, in November, which happens to be exactly when the OPEC cuts set in.
Finally, was this the only reason for the oil cutback? Of course not. Greed, as always, figures into it—also the imperialistic nuclear ambitions of Saudi Arabia’s mortal enemy, Iran, a country which the Biden administration seems intermittently to favor over Trump’s preferred Sunni plus Israel coalition.
Anything that hurts the Biden administration hurts Iran, in the eyes of the Saudis.
All of this taken together inspired Saudi Arabia and MBS to do what they did.
Good luck to them—and us.
