In late September, and following the G7, the European Union announced what it believed to be one of the most effective weapons for draining Moscow’s warlike finances while tackling its own energy crisis: an oil price cap.
A few weeks later, and while the continent still hasn’t stopped drinking from the Russian source to quench its thirst for energy, the West is ruined, seeing its plan seriously undermined.
Led by Saudi Arabia and complemented by Russia, OPEC countries announced their decision to cut their oil production for the month of November by two million barrels per day, equivalent to 2% of global production, in the face of a sharp fall in the price of crude oil.
A few weeks before the inevitably decisive midterm elections, the Biden administration is of course furious: In the fight against runaway inflation – led in particular by energy prices – it has long pressured its allies within OPEC, starting with Saudi Arabia, to do it do not reduce their production in this way.
alignment
She accuses Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of the Saudi crown, now acting prime minister and apparent admirer of Vladimir Putin, of aligning himself with Russia.
While Riyadh had played mediator in a prisoner swap between Kyiv and Moscow this summer, the Biden administration’s entire Gulf policy is being called into question after a summer visit with meager results that some described as “humiliating”. became “For the United States.
The European Union can share his anger. With this increase in crude oil prices, the oil cartel’s decision once again excludes India and China from its strategy towards Russia. The two countries, which in recent weeks seemed a little far from Russian oil deliveries at discount prices, are all the more likely to fall back into Moscow’s arms in view of the sharp rise in world crude oil prices.
In both Europe and the United States, this cut in world production also risks undoing some of the costly measures taken to contain energy prices and inflation. And to fill the coffers of the Kremlin, which is undoubtedly pleased to be able to more easily fund a war in Ukraine in the coming months, which it is losing both on the ground and in the long run.