Posted on 04/03/2023 9:49:44 AM PDT by Red Badger
Saudi Arabia, whose relationship with the United States has taken a nosedive during President Joe Biden’s tenure, announced on Sunday it would lead the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), including Russia, to cut over one million barrels of output a day starting next month, which could cause higher U.S. inflation.
Saudi Arabia also stated it would cut production by another 500,000 barrels a day starting in May. Oil prices soared 7.5% at the week’s open after the Saudi announcement. Kevin Book, managing director of Clearview Energy Partners, told CBS News the cuts could cause U.S. gasoline prices to rise roughly 26 cents per gallon.
The move on Sunday follows OPEC’s decision last October to reduce production by two million barrels a day. “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia,” Biden threatened in October. “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be — there will be consequences.”
“President Biden said he would make the kingdom of Saudi Arabia a pariah state. That was an enormous mistake,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. “But let’s look at the facts. They are an important security partner for the United States. There’s only one country in that whole region that wants to threaten the United States of America and Israel and wipe us from the face of the earth. That’s the leadership in Iran and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s been an important partner in helping protect us from that threat.”
Unlike the warm relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia during the Trump administration, Biden’s actions, including calling Saudi Arabia a “pariah” in 2019 when he was running for president, have alienated the Saudis to the point that they have tried effecting a rapprochement with Iran, their greatest enemy, brokered by China. Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in 2016.
“Given the preventive nature of OPEC decisions, there is clearly something OPEC knows about demand trends and inventories that we have yet to discover fully in overall supply and demand balances,” Christyan Malek, global head of energy strategy at JP Morgan, told The Wall Street Journal.
Ole Hansen, an oil analyst at Denmark’s Saxo Bank, opined that the Saudi decision was indicative of their worries that interest rates in the U.S. will increase.
But that is expected this time of year as people start driving more, Spring Break, etc.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve can't be raided by Biden any more..................
Good. Stupid should hurt.
Our treasonous scumbags here have slit our throats and our enemies see blood in the water.
Time to get the “ididthat” stickers back out and on the pumps.
Hey Joe....Keep exporting our oil and shutting down lines and draining the reserve and sending our weapons to “Z” the perv..
They all get scraped off by the Dems...................
WFH two days a week is looking better with each passing day.
The problem is so many will never figure out what is going on no matter how much suffering there is.
The Stupid One is hurting US though...
Gee, I thought that Democrats cared about America’s relationships with other nations.
They probably will show up again
Oh sure. Right on que!
Why would they listen to him?
Welcome to the 70’s redux. After the ruinous spending to support the Viet Nam war while keeping the economy running like peacetime, and Nixon closing the gold window, we got accelerating inflation. As OPEC discovered that the value of the oil they sold was dropping fast, they imposed an embargo and caused the oil crises of the 70’s.
Today, Biden’s ruinous spending “to offset the effects of the pandemic” has unleashed inflation again. This time OPEC, at the urging of China and with the complicity of Russia, Brazil, India, and others, want to get off the “dollar standard” and replace the buck as the world’s reserve currency.
Take a look at what happened to Great Britain when the pound ceased to be the world reserve currency. That was the last nail in the coffin of the decrepit British Empire. Xi and others are set to pound nails into the coffin of American empire.
In the 70’s there was no credible competitor to the dollar, so the US recovered. The Chinese have spent years positioning the yuan to replace the dollar. Even if Paul Volker and Ronald Reagan were still with us, they wouldn’t be able to undo the damage done by the Fed since Greenspan’s retirement as exacerbated by Federal government spending.
WFH 100% for me. My wife must be in the office to perform police/fire/EMS dispatch. She works 4d x 10 hr shifts. Her commute is about 1.5 miles. If pressed, she could walk, ride a bike, ride her motorcycle...assuming the weather was reasonable. Blowing snow in a 45 MPH steady wind is not a reasonable state for walking to work.
Leftist democrats are an absolute disaster.
FJB
The petroleum reserve is a goofy PR stunt. It’s intended for other purposes and amounts to a drop in the bucket, literally. But as usual, it “sounds good” and shows “action” in a time of crisis.
These cuts were agreed upon by OPEC+ with Russia and a few other players pushing hard for them.
It’s not a surprise at all.
It was already in the works since last November.
You know all that cool sanctions crap we like to talk about? Russia isn’t a chump. They can push back.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-is-opec-an-overview-of-key-members
It will NOT cause higher inflation. It will occasion higher prices but that is not inflation. Raising the price of oil at the source does not increase the money supply. Rising prices are a result of inflation, not its cause.
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