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Saudi Arabia’s Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud attends an OPEC meeting in Vienna, Oct. 5.
Photo:
christian bruna/Shutterstock
The Biden administration plans to “re-evaluate” America’s eight-decade-old alliance with Saudi Arabia because of last week’s OPEC+ decision to cut oil production. But the White House posturing looks like a bid to distract from the effects at home of Washington’s failure to pursue a successful transition to clean energy.
Blaming Saudi Arabia, or OPEC+, or
Vladimir Putin,
for an energy crisis that results from a policy of switching from carbon fuels to “clean energy”—on the basis of what look like utopian assumptions—is disingenuous. Unlike countries such as Japan or China, America can produce far more oil than it consumes. The oil prices U.S. consumers pay are due to choices their leaders made.
In September 2019, the U.S. became a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products for the first time since such records have been kept. In 2020 America exported still more oil, with investment in domestic pipelines, refineries and extraction technologies and resulting employment all reaching new highs. But in 2021 America began importing much larger amounts of crude oil than it produced. In 2022 the U.S. will again be a net oil importer. In less than two years, investment in the domestic American oil industry has collapsed, U.S. refining capacity has atrophied, and the jobs that investment produced have largely vanished.
The causes of this reversal, which left the U.S. dependent on imported oil at a dangerous geopolitical moment, aren’t a mystery. In the 2020 election, American politicians, from
Joe Biden
down, ran and won on a set of policies intended to wean the American economy off fossil fuels in favor of so-called clean energy. These policies included bans on fracking, bans on drilling, closing down the Keystone Pipeline and other infrastructure built to serve future energy needs, and subsidizing alternative energy, such as solar, and electric cars.
It is up to American political leaders and voters to weigh the benefits and costs of “clean energy.” In some circumstances, voters might choose policies that perhaps would reduce the country’s gross domestic product through higher fuel prices and other measures to achieve particular goals—such as encouraging people to ride bicycles or take public transportation. It also is the prerogative of elected leaders to pursue policies that promote new domestic industries, even if those policies kill off existing industries. Those policies also might promote new forms of dependence on foreign trade partners like China—the world’s leading and in some cases only source of rare-earth metals that are essential to the solar energy fuel cycle.
Demonizing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for refusing to politicize oil production while the U.S. negotiates an Iran nuclear deal that will fund the programs that let Tehran launch missiles at Saudi oil fields is scapegoating. Scapegoating poisons the democratic process by trying to prevent citizens from properly responding to the results of their own choices. In doing so, politicians short-circuit the self-correcting mechanisms that allow democracy to function. Instead, elected officials make voters endure the negative consequences of bad policy choices by blaming foreign entities for predictable outcomes.
Last week some Washington commentators spouted accusations of Saudi Arabia “siding with Russia” after the OPEC+ announcement of relatively small production cuts. In a statement Thursday, the Saudi foreign minister revealed that the U.S. asked OPEC+ to delay announcing its production cut by a month and said that he rejects such “dictates” from Washington. The figure of two million barrels a day that is often cited is eye-catching but misleading since many OPEC+ states aren’t meeting their current production quotas by a total of about one million barrels a day. The actual OPEC+ cut is therefore around one million. Markets’ lethargic response to the announcement suggests that they are well-supplied and not overreacting.
Nor is the OPEC+ decision to cut production a matter of Saudi national interest alone. The Gulf states say they hope that thanks to the recent cut, OPEC+ will have more spare capacity to respond to market disruptions likely to arise this winter. Those potential disruptions result from U.S. and European Union sanctions on Russian oil as well as instability stemming from Mr. Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons. The spare capacity helps Gulf states keep markets balanced, reducing the chances of global economic catastrophe. Further, price stabilization will create a more favorable environment for sustainable investment in downstream and refining facilities that will foster market stability.
If America wants to prevent another shock in world energy markets, it should begin producing more oil.
Mr. Alyahya is a fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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Appeared in the October 14, 2022, print edition.
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