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Saudi Arabian flag with stock graph and an oil pump jack miniature model are seen in this illustration.
Saudis face reality on oil prices
Since November 2022, Saudi Arabia has led the grouping of OPEC members plus Russia in maintaining oil supply cuts to try to keep prices as close as possible to an unofficial target of $100 per barrel for Brent crude. Not coincidentally, the IMF estimates Saudi Arabia need $100 barrels to balance its budget as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman funds hugely expensive development projects as part of his Vision 2030 economic reform plan. Saudi Arabia is currently producing 8.9 million barrels a day, its lowest level in more than a decade.
The lower price will be good news for incumbent politicians facing public anger over broader inflation. That’s also true for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, whom Donald Trump has blamed for higher prices for US consumers. The Saudi decision will keep gasoline prices in check through the US election.
Oil rig around the US Capitol.
The greatest energy boom you’ve never heard of
“A few years ago, we were energy independent, now we’re begging countries to give us gasoline.” —Former president Donald Trump
“Joe Biden has destroyed US energy independence.” —Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
“Since Joe Biden’s first day in office, he has waged an unprecedented war on American energy producers.” —House GOP
If we are to believe Republican politicians, President Joe Biden is waging a debilitating “war” on American energy. But is that true?
Not quite. After having to import massive amounts of foreign energy for most of its modern history, the United States became energy independent in 2019 – when Donald Trump happened to be president – thanks to the decades-long fracking and shale revolution. Domestic oil and gas production dipped briefly during the pandemic as global demand collapsed, but it quickly bounced back under President Biden.
Today, the US is the largest crude producer in the world by a mile, pumping out over 13 million barrels per day and accounting for nearly a fifth of the world’s total oil production. Indeed, the US is now producing more oil thanany country in history.
A similar story can be told for US natural gas production, which has also been setting record highs since recovering from the pandemic in 2021. As of 2022, the US exported far more natural gas than it imported – the bulk of which has been converted to liquified natural gas (LNG) and gone to Europe to ease the energy shortage created by the cutoff of Russian supplies in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Last year, the US overtook Australia and Qatar as the world’s largest exporter of LNG, and the country’s export capacity is only set to continue growing.
Meanwhile, the US continues to deploy renewables, such as solar power and battery storage, at a significant rate. Together, these sources are expected to make up 81% of all new electric-generating capacity in the country this year. Such growth is in large part thanks to the exponential decline in the cost of these technologies, whose uniquely steep learning curves suggest they are going to get even cheaper as they get deployed further, in turn boosting adoption, getting more competitive, and so forth.
In short, the US has quietly but surely become the world’s top energy superpower. As Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) put it in a recent op-ed, “our country has never been more energy-independent than we are today.” Much like America’s hegemony in other realms, this newfound dominance does not come without certain geopolitical upsides.
For starters, America’s large and growing market share deprives Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other petrostates of both pricing power and geopolitical leverage, lowering energy prices and boosting geopolitical stability. This was evident in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when US energy exports played a major role in stabilizing global energy markets and bolstering European energy security. US oil supply growth has also kept oil prices relatively in check in the face of OPEC production cuts designed to prop them up.
Even with the “OPEC Plus” additions, the cartel currently controls less than half of the global supply of oil (and shrinking). Eventually, it will buckle under the realization that further production cuts will reduce rather than increase its revenues. When that happens, its members will give in and flood the market with more oil, sinking prices. Lower energy prices stimulate the global economy and help ease inflationary pressure.
Perhaps more speculatively (but even more exciting), domestic energy abundance could also usher in a new era of US technological advancement and productivity growth that increases living standards for all Americans and gives the nation a bigger edge in its budding competition with China. Granted, there’s more that goes into this than just ample cheap energy – but it’s certainly a good start.
If this all seems like tremendous news for America, that’s because it is. And yet, you probably haven’t heard anything about it. It’s just too politically inconvenient a feat for either party to acknowledge (let alone celebrate).
Take Republicans. They don’t want you to know about the energy boom under Biden because it contradicts a key attack line they’ve been using for decades to score political points: that unlike the pro-business, pro-American, pro-fossil fuel Republicans, ivory tower, coastal Democrats are hellbent on sacrificing the country’s energy independence, national security, and economy in a zero-sum crusade to save the environment. If it’s not happening, they don’t have to credit the opposition for it. Case closed.
Alas, it is happening, and Biden does deserve at least some credit for it. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global energy prices soaring, Biden backtracked on his campaign promise to cut domestic fossil-fuel production and urged US oil companies to “drill, baby, drill” to counteract “Putin’s Price Hike.” Since taking office, Biden has issued more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands than Trump. His administration approved the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska that had been stalled for decades and expedited the construction of an oil pipeline in West Virginia, and his marquee legislative achievements, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, have made it easier to invest in all forms of American energy.
The odd thing is that Democrats themselves (with few exceptions) don’t seem to want to take credit for the energy boom they’re presiding over, because record-high fossil-fuel production is – at least on the surface – an awkward fit with their climate goals and a major pain point with a progressive base the Biden administration is already struggling to appeal to on the back of the Gaza war. This was a major driver of the White House’s decision in January to freeze approvals of new licenses to export US LNG – a largely symbolic move that will lower electricity and heating prices for American consumers at the expense of our European allies (and, to a lesser extent, domestic natural gas producers).
But what climate activists and White House should keep in mind is that while drilling for oil and gas does exacerbate climate change in the near term by increasing carbon and methane emissions, the alternative to more American oil and gas isn’t more clean energy – it’s more foreign oil, gas, and coal. And foreign oil, gas, and coal are far dirtier than American oil and gas. However much we may wish it away, demand for fossil fuels isn’t going anywhere for the near future; if the US were to slash its supply tomorrow, other producers would step in to fill the gap, and overall emissions would rise.
For progressives’ ambitious decarbonization policies to really work, they have to be politically sustainable. That means that they have to bring ordinary people along, not just in the future but now, and the way to do that is by ensuring low and stable energy prices. Boosting US oil and gas production as bridge fuels at the same time as we invest hundreds of billions of dollars to make clean energy cheaper and wean the world off carbon does exactly that, trading slightly higher emissions today for much lower emissions tomorrow.
This is an accomplishment Biden should be running on, rather than away from.
A police officer gets his shoes shined as he and fellow officers stand outside the prosecutor's office before the arrival of Peru's President Dina Boluarte, in Lima, Peru March 7, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Peru declares crime emergency, EU cuts Somalia aid, Chinese weddings dwindle, McCarthy tests his majority, oil prices surge
160,200: Peruvian President Dina Boluarte declared a state of emergency in two districts of the capital, Lima, and one in the northern city of Talara amid a devastating wave of violent crime. Lima police collected 160,200 crime reports last year, up 33% from 2021, part of a larger spike in violence in South America.
7 million: The European Union has suspended funding for the World Food Program’s operations in Somalia, which last year amounted to over $7 million, after a United Nations investigation discovered widespread theft by local power brokers, armed groups, and even aid workers themselves. The graft has macabre costs: Somalia barely avoided a famine last year amid a drought that killed 43,000 people — half of them children under 5.
6.8 million: Love is decidedly not in the air in China, as the country registered just 6.8 million weddings in 2022, a drop of some 800,000 compared to 2021 and the lowest figure on record. Meanwhile, even those who are tying the knot are more hesitant to have children, a factor contributing to China’s first population decline in 60 years, and a major long term headache for policy planners in Beijing.
4: US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is gambling that he can push through a temporary spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, despite fierce blowback from within his own GOP caucus. His margin is slim: he can afford to lose just only 4 GOP votes if he wants the measure to pass.
95: The price of oil hit $95 dollars per barrel, climbing some 26% for the quarter as Saudi Arabia and Russia have cut production to boost prices. Higher oil prices are likely to prop up inflation, complicating matters not only for households, but also for central bankers who had been hoping to ease off of interest rate hikes sooner than later.
Trader Warren Meyers watches the Fed Rate announcement on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange
Breather for the Fed?
For background, the Fed has been bumping up rates since March 2022, when pandemic-related stimulus and supply chain kinks were driving annual price growth towards 9%, a 40-year high.
But these days things are looking rosier. The latest data show annual price growth in May was just 4%, almost a full point below April’s clip. It’s the 11th consecutive month that inflation has fallen.
Falling energy prices, down nearly 12%, played a major role. And that’s despite Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to cut oil output by 1M barrels a day. Oil prices have actually fallen since then, as other petrostates keep pumping flat out, while the post-COVID economic recovery of China — the world’s largest oil importer — remains sluggish.
All of that leaves room for the Fed to hold rates. But if so, the reprieve may be short: Core inflation, which excludes fuel and food prices, is still above 5% — a long way from the pre-pandemic average of about 2%. Even if the Fed stands pat, it may still have to hit the hiking trail again at its next meeting in July.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Is the US trying to patch things up with Saudi?
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled on Tuesday to Saudi Arabia for a three-day trip, marking the second high-level US visit to the kingdom over the past month.
While few have expectations of a large breakthrough in a relationship that's been underpinned by awkward exchanges and tense standoffs for some time, Blinken is likely hoping to bolster waning trust.
Why now? The US’ top diplomat likely hopes that confidence-boosting measures can help give Washington some renewed influence over global oil policy, which the Saudis largely steer. And the timing of this trip couldn’t be more apt, particularly after Riyadh announced Sunday that it will unilaterally slash oil production by 1 million barrels per day starting next month. (You may recall that the kingdom’s decision to cut oil output – in turn raising gas prices – ahead of the 2022 midterm elections deepened the US-Saudi rift.)
Blinken also reportedly aims to push the Saudis to normalize ties with Israel, which has long been on the cards but hasn’t materialized due to a range of sticking points.
To be sure, the US-Saudi relationship is important to both sides. However, deteriorating relations amid a changing geopolitical landscape reinforce that the longstanding model of Saudi oil in exchange for US arms and security guarantees no longer flies.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro’s not going anywhere. What comes next for Venezuela?
Just four years ago, most observers would have bet good money that Nicolás Maduro’s days at the top were numbered.
In 2018, Venezuela’s strongman president had declared himself the winner after a reelection battle that was broadly considered to be rigged. Maduro’s subsequent crackdown on anti-government protesters made him one of the world’s most reviled and isolated leaders.
It’s now been 10 years since Maduro, the foreign minister at the time, was handed the top job, and his power is more entrenched than ever. How has the Venezuelan despot survived and what might this mean for the country's politics and its people?
Meet Maduro. A former bus driver from Caracas, Maduro got his political training as a young man in Cuba. Upon returning to Venezuela, he became a big shot in the union movement and in leftist politics as a member of the United Socialist Party.
An avid backer of Chavismo – the left-wing populism championed by his predecessor Hugo Chávez – Maduro was tapped to take on presidential responsibilities after Chávez's death in 2013.
Like Chávez, Maduro’s authoritarian predilections were apparent from the get-go. Amid growing popular discontent, in 2015 he declared “Operation Liberation and Protection of the People” (the irony!) to address what he called the country’s growing security concerns. Maduro deployed 80,000 security forces to round up alleged detractors, leading to scores of extrajudicial killings.
This leadership style of quashing dissent and jailing political opponents and journalists came to a head after the widely disputed 2018 election, when thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest Maduro’s win, broadly dubbed a sham. The regime’s brutal response to the protests – security forces killed dozens of demonstrators and shuttered independent news organizations – further solidified Maduro’s pariah status in many parts of the world.
The sanctions weapon. The US has used sanctions as a bludgeon against Venezuela since 2006, when the Bush administration banned arms sales to the Chávez regime due to its ties to rogue states, like Cuba and Iran.
But this campaign ramped up a lot during the Maduro years. The Trump administration, in particular, adopted a merciless approach to Caracas, enforcing sanctions that cut it off from US financial markets, essentially limiting its oil sales to the black market and prohibiting purchases of Venezuelan debt.
Venezuela’s economy has since been through the wringer. From once having the highest per capita income rate in Latin America, Venezuela is now flailing. Starved of investment, hyperinflation topped an absurd 65,000% in 2018. The country’s oil output has remained sluggish over the past decade despite the fact that it has the biggest liquid gold reserves in the entire world. Consider that in 1998 Venezuela was producing around 3 million barrels of crude per day – that number slipped to 626,000 in 2020.
To be sure, years of corruption, underinvestment, and mismanagement have also pummeled the petrostate’s economy. In 1997, one independent group claimed that around $100 billion had been embezzled from the state oil company in the preceding 25 years.
Given the heft of Western sanctions, how have Venezuela and Maduro managed to stay afloat?
Who’s isolating whom? Taking a page out of Chávez’s playbook, Maduro has worked hard to cultivate ties with other heavily sanctioned states and US rivals like Iran, Russia, and China, as well as Turkey.
Reflecting its mercantile approach to geopolitics, Beijing has given Caracas billions of dollars worth of loans in recent years in exchange for oil. China has also helped Caracas deliver the goods in violation of US sanctions. Moscow has similarly doled out cash to help keep Caracas afloat.
Maduro has also deepened relations with the US’ forever enemy, Iran, with Caracas sending Tehran billions of dollars worth of gold in exchange for oil, gas, and food. The friendship is deep, with Iran reportedly set to revamp the Paraguana Refining Center, Venezuela's largest, in the near term. Crucially, the overhaul will replace US technology – originally used to build Venezuela's oil infrastructure – with … Chinese and Iranian parts.
Moreover, under Maduro, illicit economies – including trading of illegal drugs, gold, and oil – made up a whopping 21% of Venezuela's gross domestic product in 2021.
The perks of a ”pink tide.” Maduro has benefited enormously from the region’s changing politics. A “pink tide” across Latin America in recent months has seen a slew of leftist governments come to power that are more sympathetic to Maduro’s socialist, anti-imperialist agenda.
“For a long time, diplomacy in Latin America wasn't very ideological because state sovereignty was the most sacrosanct principle,” says Will Freeman, a Latin America expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Governments in the region are now taking a more ideological approach to diplomacy,” resulting in leftist leaders in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and elsewhere wanting to deepen ties with the socialist in Caracas.
A dysfunctional opposition. It’s been a boon for Maduro that the opposition has proven to be lackluster and underwhelming. Many place the blame at the feet of former wunderkind Juan Guaidó.
After the 2018 election, Guaidó, then president of the opposition-controlled legislature, set up a shadow government backed by the West. But critics say Guaidó made no progress in moving the country toward new elections and that he failed to get the military or courts onside. Popular support has also nosedived, with just 6% of Venezuelans polled in Nov. 2022 saying that they’d vote for him.
After Guaidó’s allies voted to remove him from office in December, the former de facto leader said the move would create a “power vacuum” that would only boost Maduro.
And he might have been right: The Biden administration recently moved to ease some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector. While this has largely been aimed at boosting production and keeping global prices down amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine that the White House would have felt as comfortable making overtures to the Maduro regime if there was a powerful and popular opposition to deal with in Caracas.
“Venezuela is fixed.” Not quite. Feeling emboldened by Maduro’s staying power, some Venezuelans have adopted the slogan “Venezuela is fixed” — a tongue-in-cheek reference used in the country when conditions mildly improve. They point to the fact that the International Monetary Fund recently predicted that Venezuela's economy will grow by 6% this year, while the poverty rate decreased for the first time in seven years.
But the current political dynamic is more a result of “broad disillusionment and disengagement from politics,” says Freeman, adding that “Maduro has not become popular by any stretch of the imagination.”
What’s more, the humanitarian situation remains grim. Half the country lives in poverty, down from 65% in 2021, giving rise to one of the world's biggest refugee crises in recent years. Venezuela is also one of the world’s most unequal states, with the wealthiest Venezuelans 70 times richer than the poorest. It’s for this reason, Freeman says, that what we've seen is “more of an economic recovery on the surface” only. The foundation remains rotten.
What now? Maduro’s political future is as secure as ever. But there’s no quick fix for Venezuela's economy or its people. Indeed, it’ll take years of investment and billions of dollars to modernize the country's energy infrastructure in order to boost output. And while other petrostates are looking to diversify their economies, Caracas is a million steps behind.
And what about the vote next year? “The elections will be very unfree and very unfair,” Freeman says, adding that “Maduro will steal them if he needs to, though he may not need to if the opposition remains this divided.”
For now, at least, Maduro, often derided as “the bus driver” from Caracas, is likely feeling pretty good about things.
People in Hong Kong hold sheets of paper in protest over coronavirus disease restrictions in mainland China.
What We’re Watching: China's zero-COVID shift, Russia's fertilizer deal, Ramaphosa's corruption probe, EU's oil wrangling
China hints zero-COVID shift, censors online protesters
Chinese people who can't wait to ditch zero-COVID — basically everyone except the government — got a glimmer of hope Thursday, when the senior official overseeing the policy said that China was entering a "new stage" in taming the virus. Although what that means is unclear, his comments follow moves by several big cities to relax lockdown rules. Meanwhile, now that most COVID protesters are off the streets, Xi Jinping's censors have taken the fight to cyberspace. They'll have to get creative because Chinese netizens are now ranting about zero-COVID with the online equivalent of the now-verboten blank sheets of paper: sarcastic memes or words that sound similar to Xi or resign. Interestingly, the government outsources content moderation to social media companies that use a mix of humans and artificial intelligence. Exhaustion with zero-COVID might be the biggest test to date of a system that’s not designed to be perfect but rather effective enough at wiping out critical voices.
Some rare good food news out of Ukraine
The UN says it is on the verge of brokering a deal to resume Russian ammonia exports via a Black Sea port in Ukraine. What’s ammonia anyway? The smelly gas is a key ingredient in nitrate fertilizer, which is needed to help plants and seeds grow. Russia and Ukraine are both major global exporters of grain and fertilizer, and disruptions to the output of both due to the ongoing war have led to a global food crisis that’s plunged some 47 million people into “acute hunger,” with import-reliant Africa and the Middle East particularly hard hit. The resumed use of this ammonia pipeline is crucial to avoiding mass food shortages in a year’s time. This comes after a deal brokered by Turkey in the summer saw grain exports pick up again after a Russian blockade caused global shortages and record-high food inflation in developed and emerging economies while bringing poor countries like Somalia to the brink of famine.
A weakened Ramaphosa likely to stay on
South Africa’s embattled President Cyril Ramaphosa could be forced out of office after an independent body found he may have covered up the theft of a large wad of cash from his game farm in 2020. It’s alleged that Ramaphosa, who was elected in 2018 to head the African National Congress – Nelson Mandela’s party – on an anti-corruption platform, illegally stashed up to $4 million at his farm and paid off thieves who stole $580,000 stuffed under his couch (you can’t make this stuff up)! Ramaphosa’s political future now hangs in the balance as he waits for the ANC to vote on Dec. 16 on whether he should lead them into the next general election in 2024 and for parliament to decide whether to impeach him. It is unlikely given that a two-thirds majority – including half of ANC’s parliamentarians – would need to back the motion. Though the ANC has been plagued by infighting since Ramaphosa replaced party stalwart Jacob Zuma in 2018, not enough ANC members will be willing to switch sides to show Ramaphosa the door.
A crude 60-dollar ceiling
Put a cap on it — a $60 cap, to be precise. That’s what the European Commission is asking all 27 EU member states to pay, maximum, per barrel of Russian oil from now on. The move, which requires unanimous EU approval, is meant to undermine the Russian war machine in Ukraine – the EU is Russia’s largest oil customer. But how much impact would it have? Russia sells its crude for about $20 per barrel less than Brent, the international standard. With Brent prices in the $80s, a $60 cap might be more of a fly than a buzzsaw for the Kremlin. Some of the EU’s more brazen Russia hawks — Poland and the Baltics — wanted a (knee)cap of just $30. Washington and other EU members worried that if the cap was too low, Russia would cut off oil exports to the EU entirely, sending energy prices soaring. A separate European ban on seaborne Russian oil is set to come into effect on Monday. The EU hopes the price cap will be agreed upon by members and other G-7 countries by then.Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Why Washington is chatting up Nicolás Maduro again
You can isolate some of the oil-rich strongmen all of the time, or all of the oil-rich strongmen some of the time, but that’s about it these days, as Joe Biden is quickly learning.
Last week, it emerged that the White House is exploring ways to relax certain sanctions against the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro. Under a proposed deal, Washington would allow US oil major Chevron to resume exporting oil from the country while Maduro, for his part, would agree to restart talks with the opposition about free and fair elections.
As a reminder, a 2018 crisis brought on by Maduro’s repression and economic mismanagement drove millions of Venezuelans abroad. It also landed the country under “maximum pressure” financial and energy sanctions from the US, which were designed to squeeze Maduro — the heir to “21st Century Socialist” Hugo Chávez — from power.
Spoiler: it failed. Maduro and his cronies stuck it out, aided by a fractious opposition that squandered the confidence of its foreign backers. Now things are looking up for Maduro.
The Ukraine war is, of course, exacerbating a global energy crunch. And with the West seeking to isolate one oil superpower – Russia – Washington has had to look elsewhere for help bringing down prices.
Last week’s OPEC+ decision to cut production by 2 million barrels per day was a slap in the face to Biden. Washington had urged its eternal frenemies the Saudis to boost output to ease global price pressures and punch a hole in Vladimir Putin’s war chest. All of that has suddenly cast Venezuela, owner of the world’s largest oil reserves, in an even softer light as a longer-term option for getting more barrels back onto the market. The country once pumped as much as 3.5 million barrels daily before mismanagement and sanctions wrecked the industry. Today’s output is barely even 700,000 barrels.
And it’s not just the global context that’s changed, according to Risa Grais-Targow, a Latin America specialist at Eurasia Group. “The entire region is basically leftist now,” she says, “or it really will be when Lula wins in Brazil, so there's just no coalition there behind the US policy stance on Venezuela anymore.”
As if to underscore the point, Colombia, the US’ closest ally in the region, recently elected its first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro. One of his first steps was to reestablish ties with neighboring Venezuela, which his center-right predecessor had cut. (You can see GZERO’s full interview with Petro here.)
Would sanctions relief really change things in Venezuela? It would give the regime a fresh revenue stream, as Chevron has joint ventures with the state oil company, PDVSA. And signaling a thaw in US-Venezuela ties would help Caracas sell its oil to China and other Asian buyers at something closer to full price – for years, PDVSA has had to sell to them at knockdown rates over fears that the US might impose financial sanctions on any countries that buy from Venezuela.
What’s more, a deal could also lead to the US unfreezing some of the Maduro government’s funds pending a pact with the opposition to spend the money on humanitarian relief. Although the IMF sees Venezuela’s GDP growing 6% this year, it has fallen more than 80% over the past decade. More than a quarter of Venezuelans remain undernourished, according to the UN, and migrants continue to flee the country in large numbers.
Will Maduro actually make real concessions? A return to talks with the opposition probably isn’t hard for Maduro to agree to, says Grais-Targow. The bigger question is whether he’d really accept a free and fair election in 2024. Until now, the government has used all kinds of legal tricks to tilt the field in its favor, and the opposition boycotted the vote entirely in 2018.
Maduro is powerful but not necessarily popular. In regional elections earlier this year, opposition candidates did surprisingly well, even in some Maduro strongholds. In a truly free and fair vote – which the government hasn’t allowed in years – the opposition might stand a chance if it were able to unify behind a single candidate.
To underscore the point, earlier this week, after Venezuela’s opposition announced it would do just that in 2024, the president immediately announced that he might move the general election up to 2022, just to throw his opponents off balance.
All of that puts the question back in the White House’s court. How much is it willing to concede to a Venezuelan strongman who is suddenly approaching Tío Sam and the opposition from a position of relative strength? With the global energy crunch set to last for the foreseeable future, who really has whom over a barrel?
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