Reporters were sitting a bit too close by when French President Emmanuel Macron broke the bad news to President Joe Biden.
“I had a call with [Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan],” Macron said to Biden, referring to the leader of the United Arab Emirates. “He told me two things: ‘I’m at a maximum, maximum (production capacity)’ — this is what he claims. And then, he said [the] Saudis can increase by 150 [thousand barrels per day], maybe a little bit more, but they don’t have huge capacities before six months’ time.”
The context is that Biden is counting on both the UAE and Saudi Arabia to increase oil production so as to mitigate the upward price pressure caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And so, if Nahyan is to be believed, Biden is running out of places to find more oil.
This conversation is more delicious because it was inadvertently made public. But what looks like a silly game of telephone between world leaders is more likely a calculated effort by Saudi and Emirati officials to make Biden pay the maximum price possible for whatever help they’re willing to give him.
The fact is, U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE have deteriorated badly under Biden. As a candidate, Biden promised to make the Saudi regime “a pariah.” And since taking office, he has tried to reinstate a destructive nuclear deal with the Saudis’ archenemy, Iran.
It may be that these two oil-producing nations are genuinely unable to do anything for Biden, even if they want to. But one way or another, they intend to rake him over the coals, perhaps as retribution for his insulting behavior toward them.
To be sure, the Saudi regime’s assassination of Jamal Khashoggi had to be condemned in some fashion. But Biden’s overtly antagonistic approach to these two friendly Sunni regimes contrasts sharply with the Trump administration’s more constructive approach, which led to the restoration of diplomatic ties between them and Israel. This helps explain why leaders from these two countries refused Biden’s phone calls last year — a humiliating snub for a president they do not respect.
And to make matters worse, Biden has been forced by his earlier bluster to plan a trip to the region this summer, during which he will be the supplicant before the very leaders he once ostentatiously condemned. It is a feather in the caps of these despotic rulers that they can make a desperate president grovel in this manner. And they may not even help him after all that.
This should not have been necessary in the first place, but when Biden does arrive there, Macron’s comments make clear that success in persuading them to increase the oil supply is not at all guaranteed. Whatever help the Saudis or the Emiratis give will come only with great difficulty and perhaps critical concessions.
So there is probably no oil bailout for poor Joe Biden. He has miscalculated the state of world affairs once again.
Instead of prostrating himself before trained killers in the Middle East who now have clearly gotten the better of him, Biden has a much better option.
He can instead frustrate the environmental extremists in his own party and stop treating domestic oil producers like they are a disease, or at least an industry he can easily wind down. Biden can order his administration to expedite leases and permits required to make maximum use of American resources at a time when oil prices are very high, instead of making bogus excuses about how many permits they supposedly already have.
This would not only generate great wealth and high-paying jobs for Americans, but it would also diminish the importance of Middle Eastern tyrants and blunt the tools available to Vladimir Putin to finance his illegal war against Ukraine.
