"OPEC's Action Is Testimony To A Staggering US Geopolitical And Geoeconomic Error"

Yesterday was all about oil, geopolitics, and geostrategic errors; and, in the background, domestic politics, accepting past errors, and trying to make amends for them. Ironically, it all happened on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which back in 1973 jump-started a Middle East war, and then the energy crisis that led to the collapse of the post-WW2 Western political-economy model, and ushered in global neoliberalism.

OPEC+ lined up with Russia to slash output by 2m barrels a day from November and through 2023, pushing energy prices up, and seeing a slew of calls for oil to again top $100 in the near future. That was as US gasoline inventory data dropped 4.7m barrels to the lowest level since November 2014 despite apparent demand destruction.

The White House response was furious. The official statement said President Biden was “disappointed by the short-sighted decision” to cut production. The White House Press Secretary accused OPEC+ of “aligning with Russia” Off the record the response was probably blunter given such a cut had been flagged as a “hostile act”. Yet Saudi Arabia’s message to the White House also couldn’t have been blunter.