Saudi Arabia’s bullish young Crown Prince MBS has rejected the olive branch offered by Joe Biden and opted to back Russia in the fight over oil prices. In the short term Putin wins with Opec+ agreeing to a surprise reduction in supply that will push prices up. But it could backfire badly on MBS, who is not known for his good judgement with the disastrous Yemen war and the brutal Khashoggi killing already blotting his record. Backing a clearly failing Putin is a puzzling gamble.
Opec, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, was founded during a four day conference starting 10 September 1960, as a way to force oil prices up in response to US import caps. It operates as a cartel with member countries agreeing to coordinate their production of oil in order to influence prices.
Opec has already been labouring under uncertainty and panic from April 2022 onwards, with the Neptunian downward spiral to morale returning mid February to mid March 2023 and again late November through December 2023 with tr Neptune square the opportunistic, confident Mars opposition Jupiter.
MBS himself, 31 August 1985, is facing failed plans through this December, worse in January with a run of Neptunian disappointments at the same time as Opec, above, and considerable jolts and jangles to his self-esteem from mid 2023 onwards. And his Crown Prince Term chart is showing instability this December and through portions of 2023 with a downhill slide from 2024 into 2025.
He’s possibly banking on Trump being reinstalled but that relationship and MBS with Jared does not give any indication of other than ruptures and dashed hopes.
See previous posts 22 August 2022, 11 July 2022.
Yea, and blah, blah, blah.
Always a ” good” reason to go to war. First the indians were exterminated or parked like annimals in ” reserve” by the new inhabitants of the usa ; they were of course ” not christians”. So it was ok. The ” holy ” bible . …
And then, it was in name of ” democraty”, e.i comply to the usa sick demands without regards for the suffering of the populations involved. Or be carpet bombed etc ; the list is long of the us misdeeds. Poor democraties.; raped and raped again by a warmongering country,. So yes the usa, as is stands today is a war mongering nation. And i will add, you may force countries into complying with extraterritorial ” legislation” or other threats, but coercion only works for a while; you have very few friends left in the world acting like this. Meddling constantly in other countries affairs.
As for saoudie arabia, for which i have no particular sympathie, mbs has done the ” outrageous” act of not using the “holy dollar ” for payment outside the us. He probably is trying with other to free himself of it , as russia and china are also doing at the moment. Must be said your governement is accused of ” grand theft” : Confiscating other
countries’ deposits. .was never done before. No country will trust you any more with deposits in US banks. That is the result of what your government did. Accelarating the demise of the dollar
And trying to escape payment in dollars is the “ultimate sin” in the eyes of the usa. That is why the lie of irak being in possession of weapons of ” mass destruction” was used to declare war in irak and get for ” free” its oil.
So, yes ” in guns we trust”.
As i said before, if you want to extinguish a fire, you don t put fuel on it.
Thousands young men are dying in ukraine. The problem between ukraine and russia would have been resolved a long time ago without the meddling of the usa there.
you dont seem to care. I DO
@ Aline,
Where are you from? Judging by your atrocious diction and grammar, constant misspelling, and inability to construct basic sentences, I think it’s safe to assume you’re not from the United States.
So, if you’re not from the U.S., then it would be impossible for you to be an expert on what’s actually going here.
I don’t have time to respond any further to your nonsense. Go find someone else to troll.
Yep, a troll. They are everywhere, making those last-ditch devalued rubles. At the rate “A line” is burning through violent words and accusations, s/he is going to be reduced to “Yo Mamma” and “The US is so fat” jokes before too long.
Yes some truth are difficult to hear, isn t it ? If i am not from the usa, you are right in there, then you are neither from ukraine.
And it does not give you the right to wish the dead of thousands in ukraine.
My misspellings and grammatical mistakes are very underhand arguments from you, as ” trolling”.. it says something about your own character..
As for me, i admire one of your ex democrate politicians. Tulsi gabbard. A woman with guts and convictions. And she is very much alone. Shame she does not get the support she deserves, as she wishes the best for the usa and her fellow citizens.
Chris, I dislike trolls and will block them if they appear. However it is always wise to keep an ear open for divergent views.
Also I never ever criticise spelling and grammar since it usually means posters are writing in a second or third language to their own. And believe me I know how mangled my comments would be if I tried to put them into French or any language other than English.
@ Marjorie,
You’re right. I’ll keep that in mind for future reference. I just took offense to Aline’s comments because I’ve come across so many people on the internet who’ve been promulgating “whataboutism” and deflecting blame onto the West whenever topics like Ukraine or foreign policy are mentioned.
I do acknowledge that the United States is no saint and that we’ve had many foreign policy blunders over the years. However, I feel a tinge of bitterness whenever someone blames the brutal attack on Ukraine on the U.S. (instead of blaming the actual perpetrator who is Vladimir Putin) or makes excuses for things that China, Iran, or Saudi Arabia are doing because the United States and Western Europe were once “imperialist” powers….so, it’s somehow karmic.
Chris, I don’t get irritated so much – well that as well – as absolutely astounded about how an entrenched viewpoint never deviates. Everything is always the hated other’s fault, no matter what it is.
It goes part way to explaining how banjos like Trump etc get elected and continue to be supported – and Brexit gets voted through.
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
Thank you marjory,
I will remark that i neither support zelensky nor putin.
Thousands of young men and civilians are being killed in this war. Like in any war. As i said sometime, you can beter lose a hand than your life. At some time peace talks will have to be done. The sooner the better. Before there is no more ukraine.
As for putine on whom all hatred is concentrated, i will observe that he is not alone ruling russia. Him gone, someone else will be put in place.
And please, could you sometime look at tulsi gabbard. She seems to be a woman for peace.
Thank you
Tulsi Gabbard is no “woman of peace.”
She sucks up to dictators like Assad and Putin and would-be totalitarians like Trump. She has totally lost whatever (little) credibility she may have once had.
Connecticut Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is now urging President Biden to cut off sales of U.S. antimissile systems to Saudi Arabia and provide them to Ukraine, Poland, and other countries that matter more than Saudi Arabia. I support this.
I would love for Ukraine and Poland to receive them…..but it would also be nice for some of them to go to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh…since they are having constant aggression from Azerbaijan
Yea !! In guns we trust !!
@ Aline,
Well, that’s what happens when violent sociopaths like Vladimir Putin reject diplomacy and remain hellbent on engaging in genocide, desecrating cultural heritage sites, looting art, abducting children, raping and torturing, and invading and occupying a land that isn’t theirs.
We have to turn to those missles and guns. And luckily, we have plenty of them.
Aline doesn’t realize that Americans really and truly are armed to the teeth. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s eyes-wide-open reality. Any country that wants to take the fight here will have to take us on street to street, with their own supply lines across oceans. Think what you like about the US gun culture, A line, but every thorn has it’s rose.
I’m going to take a contrarian view – this is business – OPEC doesn’t want the oil price to fall below $80, as it would wreck their budgets.
MBS takes the west’s climate goals seriously. He’s trying to diversify Saudi’s economy so that when the switch from fossil fuels happens, they’re ready.
That’s why he re-opened the cinemas, ended gender segregation in public and allowed women to work and drive (to the outrage of clerics) – he’s trying to create a leisure industry. Whole new cities and industries are being built – but the transition is expensive, and needs $80 oil.
Saudi Aramco, which was 100% owned by the royal family, privatised 10% of the company and the shares were snapped up by Saudi citizens, who are proud to own part of the country’s crown jewels. They now eagerly follow the oil price, as a high price means good dividends. Thatcher would call this shareholder democracy. Marxists would call it redistribution of wealth.
Biden has already tried telling American big oil shareholders that they need to take losses to help him get re-elected, and they’ve said No.
Now he’s telling Saudi citizen shareholders they must take losses to help him get re-eected, a man who calls them pariahs and sneers at their culture and doesn’t regard them as fellow human beings. They’ve also said No.
BTW, MBS is right to diversify his economy from fossil fuels. He’s also right that a high oil price both finances domestic diversification, and encourages the world to diversify too (because a high oil price encourages a switch to renewables). Biden, with his obsession with ultra-cheap oil is pulling in the other direction.
This sounds just like the commentary Tucker Carlson and other right-wing media pundits were spouting just recently.
Taking climate change seriously is now a “right-wing conspiracy”?
Seriously?
It’s a fact that high fossil fuel prices are the only thing that encourage people to switch to renewables. You only have to look at Europe, where high natural gas prices are encouraging previously reluctant businesses to buy solar panels for their roofs.
High oil prices encourage people to buy electric vehicles.
Biden, with his obsession with ultra cheap oil, is jeopardising the transition to renewables by trying to remove the price incentive to switch.
@ Candy,
Taking climate change seriously is not a right-wing conspiracy. However, defending Saudi Arabia’s current politics and assuming Biden is aiming for lucrative oil deals are right-wing talking points.
I hardly think Saudi Arabia, who has relentlessly carpet bombed Yemen (with arms supplied to them during Trump’s reign of terror), cozying up to Putin (who is brutally attacking Ukraine without provocation),
and habitually violates human rights is taking the Global North and the West’s concern over climate change to heart.
Saudi is taking climate change seriously because it affects their economy. In other words, for them it’s business.
As for “human rights violations”, how many people does the US execute each year? How many were murdered in Iraq & Afghanistan for fun?
One of the most sickening things Biden did as he left Afghanistan was to order drone strikes on random people. One of them was an interpreter who had gone to get water, and for his pains he and his family got killed. It was shocking to see the Biden team cheering the strike. They’re psychopaths.
On the terrorism front, Biden used to finance the IRA who didn’t just kill Brits, but random Germans at British bases too. The IRA killed over 3,000 people across Europe – that’s more than the Red Brigades, ISIS, Al queda, Baider Meinhof and Basque separatists added together. Biden is a vile man.
Thank you Chris. It’s going to be “wild and woolly troll time” until the midterms. Hang in there—you’re a rockstar!
Hi, Marjorie, the suffering of the people of Yemen because of this MBS monster is beyond awful. May I ask if you see anything astrologically suggesting of MBS having some kind of deliberate “accident” which shortens his miserable life in future despite his huge security efforts? He’s made many, many enemies in the Saudi royal family.
Saudi Arabia can certainly expect repercussions for this OPEC stunt. President Biden is furious and he’s now apparently considering putting a stop on arms supplies to Saudi Arabia (which should have been done anyway – those arms are being used to terrorize Yemen).
Also, many House Democrats are calling for the withdrawal of U.S. military protection from Saudi Arabia – Biden might go along with that.
Anyway, it appears Saudi Arabia is already going into panic mode over the likely consequences. According to an article from Oil & Price, the Saudis have suddenly become very vocal and are insisting that they had no personal vendetta with Biden or the U.S. and they continued to try and justify their actions with a bunch of meaningless excuses.
It’s too late, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud is an idiot who had the audacity to challenge a seasoned foreign policy expert like President Biden….so now he has to be punished. I look forward to Saudi Arabia’s detriment.
All that will happen is that the French will supply weapons to Saudi.
In April, the Emirates (who are also a member of OPEC and voted for the production cut too), decided not to order American F35’s and ordered Rafales from France’s Dassault.
Dassault would love to supply planes to Saudi, as would Briain’s BAE.
Biden’s fit of pique might be of huge benefit to Europe’s defence industry, which needs these orders to acheive economies of scale if it is to defend Europe independently at a reasonable cost.
@ Candy,
I know about the weapons from France. Personally, I don’t see them selling to the Saudis (even if they want to).
I’m sure President Biden is also aware of this possibility as well and he’ll likely find a way of keeping France in check.
FYI, it’s more than just weaponry. Saudi Arabia depends heavily on U.S. military presence and protection. They cannot afford to lose us.
So, either way, we still have the upper hand…
Marjorie,
Thank you for writing about this. Biden recently had a major foreign policy achievement by helping broker a maritime agreement between Israel and Lebanon over gas extraction in the Eastern Mediterranean. Apparently, this is expected to help Europe in particular.
Any astrological thoughts on this martime agreement? Could this be a sign that relations between the U.S. Israel and Lebanon are improving in the near future?