Despite the White House’s public pledge that the worst inflation since the Carter era has peaked, oil has once again hit $120 per barrel, and gas prices have now fully doubled since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency. Given his administration’s continued refusal to assuage the (justified) fears of domestic oil producers, Biden is reportedly weighing a trip to Saudi Arabia to beg Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to bail the president out of his current cost crisis.
Biden and his allies are reportedly “agonizing” over whether to turn to the state he pledged to render a global “pariah” on the campaign trail and bend the knee for the crown prince, the de facto Saudi ruler whom Biden has preferred to ignore in favor of King Salman. According to Politico, Biden previously had “angrily rejected” the proposition of meeting the crown prince, who stands accused by American intelligence of authorizing the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Biden is in a bind. Considering the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia both as a leader of the Islamic world and as a bastion against Iranian power in the Middle East, all Westerners should welcome the news that Biden is considering reversing his rhetorical flourish against the kingdom and its crown prince. But Biden is a buffoon if he believes a run to Riyadh is more than much too little, much too late for his energy crisis.
In March, I warned that the crown prince wouldn’t step in to save Biden:
MBS may be a dictator who killed Khashoggi in cold blood, but he is also, despite appearances, a relatively secular nationalist at heart, keen to purge radical Wahhabism from his country and bring it into the 21st century. Like all utilitarians, MBS clearly seems to think that all of the jailing (or murdering, if you believe Western intelligence) of dissidents and consolidation of power is worth it for the bottom line. For MBS, that is Vision 2030, his plan to channel the country’s oil revenue — including from Saudi Aramco, the world’s most profitable company, which held the biggest IPO in history — into investments to diversify the Saudi economy permanently for a world after oil.
So why would MBS intentionally limit his own career-defining profits, especially when circumstance has handed OPEC more control of the oil market than the Saudis could have ever dreamed of?
The answer is the same this summer as it was in the spring. The crown prince has not signified any willingness to prioritize American allyship over its profits, and if anything, Saudi’s consideration of conducting oil transactions in Chinese currency indicates the crown prince has only continued to lose confidence in its relationship with the United States.
Unlike Biden’s “historic” release of our strategic oil reserves, which is by definition a time-limited downward pressure on pent-up oil demand, a restoration of our Saudi relationship could offset the small but not insignificant effect of Biden’s (wholly justified and laudable) ban on Russian oil imports. But any successful war on oil prices must start here at home with energy independence. That begins with increasing domestic oil production, not diminishing demand with perilous prices — unless Biden is fully willing to embrace his status as a successor of Jimmy Carter and an enemy to the working class.
