Saudi Arabia and the United States traded rare public accusations on Thursday over the kingdom’s decision last week along with other oil producers to cut output despite American objections, signaling a new low in a relationship increasingly frayed over how to respond to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry answered a vow by President Biden to reassess relations over the oil cuts with an unusual statement on Thursday that accused the United States of distorting facts and said that the White House had asked for the cuts to be delayed by one month.
That appeared to suggest that the White House was motivated, at least in part, by short-term political considerations rather than by purely trying to deprive President Vladimir V. Putin of the oil money needed to feed Russia’s war machine: A month’s delay would have diminished the chances that rising fuel prices would hurt Democrats in the midterm elections set for Nov. 8.
The Saudis said that they had disregarded the U.S. request because they feared that such a delay “would have had negative economic consequences,” without explaining what they would be.
The White House shot back later on Thursday with its own raft of accusations.
“The Saudi Foreign Ministry can try to spin or deflect, but the facts are simple. The world is rallying behind Ukraine in combating Russian aggression,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, making clear that in Washington’s view, the Saudis were undermining the efforts to isolate Russia, which also benefits from high oil prices.
“We are re-evaluating our relationship with Saudi Arabia in light of these actions, and will continue to look for signs about where they stand in combating Russian aggression,” Mr. Kirby said.
Jim Bourg/Reuters
The exchange laid bare a new level of tensions between the partners over oil and the Ukraine war. Ties had already grown strained over the kingdom’s human rights record and Saudi worries about Washington’s commitment to the kingdom’s security and interest in reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, the Saudis’ nemesis.
For the United States, the Saudi move was portrayed as treachery, a deliberate strike by a longtime ally at American efforts to sap Mr. Putin’s war effort.
The Saudis have defended their decision, saying it was based on economics, not politics, and that OPEC Plus decisions are reached by consensus among the members, not decided by Saudi Arabia alone. Saudi commentators have taken umbrage at the assumption by the United States that it can dictate the kingdom’s oil policy.
Jim Krane, an energy research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said he did not think the Saudis were seeking to help Mr. Putin, but that his interests overlapped with theirs when it came to oil.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, has announced multiple spending programs in the hundreds of billions of dollars aimed at diversifying his economy away from oil, launching new industries and building a futuristic new city in the desert. And for all of that, he will need the capital that high oil prices can bring, Mr. Krane said.
He said that OPEC had previously prioritized price stability and maintaining long-term demand for oil. In recent years, the cartel appeared to be comfortable with prices between $60 and $80 per barrel. But last week, while the price was approaching $100 per barrel, they cut output instead of increasing it, to push up the price.
“Stability is taking a back seat to politics and economic self-interest,” Mr. Krane said.
The public feud began after OPEC Plus, an expansion of the original cartel to include Russia and other oil-producing countries, announced on Oct. 5 that it would cut output by 2 million barrels per day.
The decision came despite efforts by White House officials to persuade Saudi Arabia to use its clout in the organization to keep output steady. The move was announced one day before the European Union adopted a sanctions package that was intended to cap the price of Russian oil, and it was widely seen as weakening the sanctions’ effectiveness.
Mr. Biden warned that Saudi Arabia would face “consequences,” which he did not detail, and that he planned to re-evaluate the relationship.
President Biden with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia in July. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Some members of Congress went further, accusing the Saudis of siding with Mr. Putin, who also benefits from higher oil prices, and discussing legislation that would cut arms sales to Saudi Arabia or allow lawsuits against OPEC Plus members for price-fixing.
The Saudi statement on Thursday voiced its “total rejection” of the idea that the decision on oil cuts had been politically motivated.
It said “any attempts to distort the facts about the kingdom’s position regarding the crisis in Ukraine are unfortunate,” an apparent reference to the accusation that it was siding with Russia. It underscored this by referring to Saudi votes on United Nations resolutions related to the war.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states voted at the United Nations on Wednesday to condemn Russia’s annexation of four eastern Ukrainian territories, backing a resolution that demanded Moscow reverse course.
On Thursday, the International Energy Agency portrayed the cuts as both bad for consumers because they increase energy prices and bad for producers because they undermine the long-term demand for oil.
At a time of rampant inflation and interest rate increases in many countries, the agency said, “higher oil prices may prove the tipping point for a global economy already on the brink of recession.”
Other United States partners in the Persian Gulf have continued to engage with Russia, despite American efforts to isolate Mr. Putin.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, met with Mr. Putin in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. And the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, met with Mr. Putin at a regional summit meeting in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
These countries, which maintain close ties to the United States, have resisted calls to boycott Russia, either because they have mutual economic interests or because they believe they can boost their international standing by serving as intermediaries between Russia and other countries.
The United Arab Emirates is a member of OPEC, and its leader, Sheikh Mohammed, facilitated an agreement for Russia to release 215 Ukrainian fighters in exchange for a close friend of Mr. Putin’s and 54 other prisoners of war.
This photograph made available by Russian state media shows President Vladimir V. Putin meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. Pavel Bednyakov/Sputnik
A person familiar with the talks between Sheikh Tamim of Qatar and Mr. Putin on Thursday said that Qatar needed to maintain cordial relations with Russia for other diplomatic efforts, including coordination in Syria and as a go-between with Iran about negotiations over its nuclear program.
But the Saudi pushback against American criticism highlighted the new, more independent course the kingdom has taken under Prince Mohammed. The opinion of the United States is not as important as it once was in Saudi decision-making, regional analysts said.
“The effect of Saudi decision-making on U.S. national interests will be, at the most, one factor among many that the Saudi leadership will consider before drawing their conclusions and will not be determinative,” Gerald M. Feierstein, a distinguished fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote in an analysis published on Thursday.
Prince Mohammed did not seem to have considered that the oil cut might help Russia in Ukraine, Mr. Feirstein wrote, or perhaps he even saw it as “a positive factor as a gesture to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
FEATURED IMAGE: A Saudi oil refinery in 2018. The Saudi Foreign Ministry expressed in a statement on Thursday the kingdom’s “total rejection” of the idea that it was playing politics with its oil. Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters
