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Here’s What Happens When We No Longer Need Saudi Arabian Oil

The Biden administration has released an unclassified intelligence document confirming that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. This comes as a surprise to precisely no one, but it still makes a difference that Biden has decided to make it public. The Washington Post reports that it's all part of a larger plan:

As part of his promise to “recalibrate” relations with Saudi Arabia, Biden has cited several issues, including Saudi human rights violations and political repression, the prosecution of the Saudi-led war in Yemen and the Khashoggi killing. He has already stopped the U.S. sale of offensive weapons used in the war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels and paused for review all other weapons purchases by the kingdom, the world’s largest customer for U.S. defense goods.

This is great, and I'm all for it. Nonetheless, it's hard not to be a little bit cynical about the timing:

January 6, 2021: The U.S. didn’t import any Saudi crude last week for the first time in 35 years, a reversal from just months ago when the Kingdom threatened to upend the American energy industry by unleashing a tsunami of exports into a market decimated by the pandemic.

Thanks to the fracking boom, the US is now an oil exporter, selling about 3 million barrels of crude per day onto world markets. At the same time, US oil imports from Saudi Arabia have been declining ever since 2013, finally reaching zero in the first week of January.¹ And now that we no longer need Saudi oil, we're "recalibrating" our relationship.

This is, of course, the risk Saudi Arabia has been taking for years. As long as the world needs their oil, they can get away with a lot and there's not much incentive for them to reform their brutal autocracy. Eventually, though, the oil will run out and nobody will care about them anymore unless they do something to modernize the medieval theocracy that still controls their country.

Ironically, this is reportedly MBS's goal. So far, though, the brutality of the Saudi regime has only increased, with the promises of modernization far off in the future.

¹The drop to zero is mostly symbolic, of course, and in the most recent weeks we've continued to import a small amount of Saudi oil. But our imports might as well be zero for all that they matter these days.

33 thoughts on “Here’s What Happens When We No Longer Need Saudi Arabian Oil

  1. iamr4man

    I have always suspected that MBS had Kushner’s OK before killing Khashoggi. And I also suspect Turkey has evidence of this which would help explain the Trump Administration’s deference to Erdogan.
    I have no evidence though, just speculation based on Kushner’s chummy relationship with MBS and the fact that the Turks seem to have had tapes of the goings on at the scene of the crime.

      1. Crissa

        This seems to be 'no matter what the Democrat does, it's sucking up' and 'no matter what the Republican does, it's standing firm'?

        Sure seems like there are penalties, despite the headline saying there are none

  2. skeptonomist

    Direct imports from Saudi Arabia never dominated our oil supply, but for some time they could single-handedly control oil price. But that control was gone long ago, even before fracking. I suppose we treated them so deferentially because of their monetary and potential military influence in the Middle East, although sometimes it's hard to tell whose side they are on - they are certainly more loyal to Sunni/Wahhabi activism than to whatever the US objectives are. Changes in our policy to Saudi Arabia were due a long time ago, even before Trump's weird foreign-policy attitudes.

    1. Mitch Guthman

      Realistically, we supported the Saudis because they essentially bribed the political and chattering classes (plus the military-industrial complex, too). The changes are long overdue but Trump just said the quiet parts out loud.

      Every political person or institution, every university, every academic, every retired government or military person who takes Saudi money should be ashamed. We need Saudi money out of our political life and we need to realign our Middle East policy to acknowledge that Saudi Arabia is an enemy which needs to be destroyed.

    2. quakerinabasement

      "for some time they could single-handedly control oil price. But that control was gone long ago"

      I have questions. Where's the evidence for this?

  3. akapneogy

    Even if we don't depend on Saudi oil, dances around the golden orb will still attract some presidents like insects to a lamp.

  4. Joseph Harbin

    "It's all about the oil."

    It's impossible to overstate how much a factor oil has been in seemingly everything that's happened in world affairs, at least since I've been in high school. The 1970s oil crises, stagflation, the hostage crisis, Iran-contra, the Gulf War, 9/11, the Iraq War, and of course, the biggest of all, the climate crisis.

    What happens when the world no longer needs oil, or fossil fuels in any form?

    There will be plenty to get riled up about still, but a world where oil is unimportant may be a far better place.

    1. dilbert dogbert

      The US embargoed oil to Japan. Guess what? They went to the nearest oil. Dutch East Indies. After a bit of a curfuffle in Hawaii.

    2. frankwilhoit

      It goes back much further, to the conversion of the Royal Navy from coal to oil, from 1911. Whose bright idea? Winston Churchill and Jacky Fisher (that's Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher to you; go look him up, an excessively interesting person). They thought WW I (whose start date Fisher predicted on the nose, three years beforehand) would be fought and won at sea. We're still paying for it.

        1. frankwilhoit

          I'm going to say that you are neglecting the hidden costs. Of course they are not directly commensurable, but they are extremely far-reaching. With 20/20 hindsight over the perspective of a century, and from the standpoint of the great bulk of the hidden costs having fallen, down the decades, upon the US, I say flatly that Churchill and Fisher (and Lawrence, and Balfour, and fill out the rogues' gallery with your own favorites, whomever they may be) were wrong.

  5. garytrauner

    While we no longer heavily rely on Saudi oil, and their ability to unilaterally influence the markets has diminished (somewhat), oil is a worldwide commodity. We are still susceptible to market manipulation and oil price shocks (70s gas lines) and over supply (recent 21st century price crashes).

    What if we baked the national security costs of protecting middle eastern countries with troops and bases, the Iraqi war, force projection in the middle east, etc. into the price of each barrel of oil? Gas would likely be unaffordable for most Americans.

    Saudis don't share our cultural values of democracy, equality of opportunity, women's rights (or at least what used to be most of our values before the Rs lost their minds beginning with Reagan). Its time we jump off the fossil fuel train.

  6. Altoid

    "just months ago ... the Kingdom threatened to upend the American energy industry by unleashing a tsunami of exports"

    So it's probably just me, but maybe turnabout is fair play when you're talking about an ally that's willing to "upend" a major sector of your economy? And the relative unimportance of imports from SA means you can give them a collective black eye at small cost to yourself?

    Plus, Iran policy is likely a big factor in all this too, imo. The prior guy seemed hell-bent on lining us up with everybody who said Iran was their blood enemy-- so to the extent that it wasn't about the money they'd shovel into his pockets, it was about how deeply they claimed to hate Iran. The Saudis checked both boxes, therefore were free to do whatever the hell else they wanted to do, as long as they didn't attack the Israelis.

    Biden seems, well, more nuanced (and maybe more devious) on both Iran and SA. He seems to be trying to use the prospect of changing the sanctions regime to get some leverage on Iran, and we'll see if that goes anywhere.

    About SA, I liked his move of refusing to talk directly with MBS, who is after all an underling on the organization charts and not (yet) a fellow head of state, and then putting his official stamp on hanging the murder around MBS's neck. That could be setting off an interesting little wobble in SA's internal dynamics, as well as starting a reset of the international relationship. But even if it has no internal effect there, more attention to observing protocol and using regular channels would be a good thing.

    1. Mitch Guthman

      It’s a nice symbolic touch but the bottom line is the Saudis murdered a man who’d been given sanctuary in this country and Biden gave him and Saudi Arabia a pass. That’s what people will remember and they’ll understand who’s calling the shots, too.

      1. Crissa

        ... And you're back to lying about it.

        I do notice you lie about what Biden's Administration has done, and then completely ignore mentioning what we're supposed to do about it.

  7. Ken Rhodes

    Kevin's headline asks the wrong question.

    Check the pussyfooting actions of the administration after the release of the intel report. They immediately followed by releasing a statement that President Biden won’t penalize Saudi Arabia’s crown prince over Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, fearing a breach with a *key ally*.

    The key to the dilemma is our strategic dependence on our Air Force bases there. It's the same problem we have in Turkey. Our strategic positions seem to be on tenuous footing when we have to depend on despots like Erdogan and the Saudi Royals.

  8. Larry Jones

    The diplomacy problem is not oil per se. The diplomacy problem is that big shot countries like the U.S. conduct diplomacy based on who has the most power, rather than who has the most need. Morally we should have told the king that we would not accept his bloodthirsty son as the ruler of Saudi Arabia, find somebody else before you die. But we didn't, because China and Russia would have gladly moved in and we would have lost an ally against terrorism as well as a geographically strategic place in the Middle East (and maybe we'll need their oli again some day, who knows?). We would have lost a bit of power, so we're sorry, but thoughts and prayers for Jamal Khashoggi and family.

    National interest always wins.

  9. azumbrunn

    "Ironically, this is reportedly MBS's goal."

    This goal exactly was reportedly Bashir al Assad's goal when he rose to power. Look where that got Syria.

    1. Crissa

      Got Syria? A country that opened fire upon its own citizen-climate-refugees?

      Or did the Saudi's magical weather machines do that?

  10. KawSunflower

    I see that Nicolas Kristof says that "Biden lets a murderer walk."

    Since we can't bring MbS before the Hague or US courts, or confiscate any bank accounts that I am aware of, should Biden kick out the staff of the Saudi embassy & cultural center - a very short distance from me - out of the US & deny "Abu Rasasa" entry to the US for another tour like the one he enjoyed several years ago?

    What are the real meaningful options? And the idea that the US should have previously told the aging king not to change the crown prince is not something that could or should have been done; it seemed a surprise move to many.

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