{"id":63921,"date":"2022-10-25T12:15:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T17:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63921"},"modified":"2022-10-25T12:15:49","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T17:15:49","slug":"saudis-sought-oil-production-cut-so-deep-it-surprised-even-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63921","title":{"rendered":"Saudis Sought Oil Production Cut So Deep It Surprised Even Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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SAUDIS SOUGHT OIL PRODUCTION CUT SO DEEP IT SURPRISED EVEN RUSSIA<\/a><\/h3>\n

OPEC+ slashed oil production following a Saudi pressure campaign that experts say aims to hurt Democrats in the midterms.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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THE SAUDI-LED<\/u>\u00a0oil cartel OPEC+\u2019s announcement earlier this month that it was cutting 2 million barrels of oil per day \u2014 a move that would drive up the price of oil just a month before midterm elections \u2014 rankled Democrats in Washington. They accused Riyadh of aligning itself with Russia, another powerful member of OPEC+, which would indeed profit off the move. \u201cWhat Saudi Arabia did to help Putin continue to wage his despicable, vicious war against Ukraine will long be remembered by Americans,\u201d said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.<\/p>\n

But Saudi Arabia actually pushed to cut oil production twice as much as Russian President Vladimir Putin, surprising the Russians, two Saudi sources with knowledge of the negotiations told The Intercept, suggesting that Riyadh\u2019s motives run deeper than what top Democrats want to admit. The sources requested anonymity, fearing reprisal by the Saudi government.<\/p>\n

Public reporting has hinted at Saudi\u2019s Arabia\u2019s drive for a far more aggressive production cut than Russia as well as other OPEC+ members first sought. On September 27, Reuters\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Russia favored a 1 million barrel per day cut \u2014 just half of what would later be agreed upon. Then on October 5, OPEC+ announced that it would be cutting 2 million barrels a day. On October 14, the White House\u2019s National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby\u00a0said that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cmore than one\u201d OPEC+ members disagreed about the cut but were coerced by Saudi Arabia into going along with it \u2014 but he declined to specify which countries. The OPEC+ members who privately pushed back against the cut include Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, and even the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Saudi Arabia\u2019s,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the Wall Street Journal. These countries\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0feared that the production cuts could lead to a recession that would ultimately reduce demand for oil.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia, a putative ally, pushed for even deeper cuts than what Russia, a U.S. adversary, even believed they could get away with, the sources said. \u201cPeople in D.C. think MBS is siding with Putin, but I think MBS is even more Putinian than Putin,\u201d one of the sources, a Saudi close to the royal family, said, referring to Saudi Arabia\u2019s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While Saudi Arabia has maintained that the move was motivated solely by economic interests, the White House and other top Democrats have said that the Saudis are pursuing a conscious alignment with Russia. \u201cThe Saudi foreign ministry can try to spin or deflect, but the facts are simple,\u201d Kirby\u00a0said<\/a>, alleging that \u201cthey knew\u201d that the oil production cut would \u201cincrease Russian revenues and blunt the effectiveness of sanctions\u201d against Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAUDIS SOUGHT OIL PRODUCTION CUT SO DEEP IT SURPRISED EVEN RUSSIA OPEC+ slashed oil production following a Saudi pressure campaign that experts say aims to hurt Democrats in the midterms. THE SAUDI-LED\u00a0oil cartel OPEC+\u2019s announcement earlier this month that it was cutting 2 million barrels of oil per day \u2014 a move that would drive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[33300,600,25704,694,701,5567,827,834],"class_list":["post-63921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-ken-klippenstein","tag-opec","tag-opec-2","tag-russia","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-the-intercept","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63922,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63921\/revisions\/63922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}