Repeat after me. There is no oil weapon.
Except for the Gulf States, every OPEC member is bankrupt, including Saudi Arabia. They need to sell the oil more than we need to buy it. The most they can do is schedule maintenance forward, to simulate a cut in production, or symbolically refuse to sell directly to the US, while selling to brokers and third countries who re-sell to the US.
Keep in mind, of course, that the US only gets a small percentage of its oil from the Saudis. And keep in mind that every oil producer in the world, OPEC and non-OPEC alike, is trying mightily to increase production by any means possible (except the US). Keep in mind that the largest undeveloped oil deposits in the world are in non-OPEC countries, so that every barrel of oil not pumped by the Saudis is a barrel of market share lost to the Russians, or the Mexicans, or the Kazakhs...
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U.S. Crude Oil Production |
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U.S. Petroleum Imports |
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Total
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In 2000, Saudi Arabia supplied 1,566 thousand barrels per day.
That's approximately 14.1% of our imports and 9.25% of our total consumption.
Not an insignificant amount, especially should other OPEC nation's cooperate.
This is the price we pay for Congress's absolute failure to produce a coherent energy policy over the last 30 years.
Our best opportunity to extract ourselves from this quandry is to build clean-coal and nuclear power plants to increase our electric generating capacity. Construction of electric powered mass-transportation systems in our nation's most densely populated regions and urban areas could then reduce our petroleum consumption and foreign dependence.