shades fills you in

In early October 2022, OPEC+ -- the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia -- said it would cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day. This came at a time when prices were already high. The decision had major political ramifications

The Saudis did it again on April 2. Major oil exporters announced an unexpected production rollback, causing oil prices to spike

The NYT said this was a dis on Biden. Back in August 2022, he went to Saudi Arabia to push for more oil. The NYT reports that Biden left the trip thinking he had a secret deal with the Saudis to boost production. They did the opposite

The Intercept said the Saudis wanted to punish Biden and the Dems by jacking up oil prices right before the midterms -- and urged the U.S. to take a harder line against the Saudis

The New Republic agreed, and said we needed to drop our Saudi alliance entirely. We get no benefit, at the cost of whitewashing a despotic regime

Dem Senator Richard Blumenthal and Rep Ro Khanna agreed. They said Saudi Arabia sided with Russia, full stop. We need to stop giving them weapons and other military aid as soon as possible

Bernie Sanders went even further -- he said we should pull all U.S. troops out of the country

But The WSJ Ed Board said punishing the Saudis won’t make oil any cheaper and will only hurt U.S. security interests. The Biden administration needs to boost oil production at home and stop alienating our allies

An NYT Op said Saudi Arabia and Russia only have this leverage over the West because we gave it to them. We need to prioritize our energy security as soon as possible. That means boosting oil production here at home, while going green

The Hill agreed -- we need to limit OPEC’s power, and that the way to do that would be to make it easier and cheaper to pump oil in the U.S. and Canada

But maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed? WaPo pointed out that the OPEC+ cut was mostly on paper. The cartel reduced its output targets by 2m barrels/day, but the actual drop would probably only be 10% of that

Biden said the U.S. will impose “consequences” on Saudi Arabia anyway -- and was reevaluating its relationship with the country

And MoneyWeek said Saudi Arabia overplayed its hand. It needs the U.S. to supply it with weapons and guarantee its security. Now that it’s proving itself an unreliable ally, the U.S. will speed up its energy independence and cut Saudi Arabia off

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has said the move was “purely economic” and not about Russia or the U.S

Foreign Affairs Magazine said that the explanation made sense. Saudi Arabia’s not trying to pick sides, it’s trying to play both -- while securing a strong economy through the energy transition