Noah Smith, Columnist

Saudi Attack Makes Electric Vehicles Even More Important

The switch to EVs would cut dependence on unreliable supplies and do a lot to battle climate change.

September 18, 2019 at 10:00 AM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

Fill ‘er up? Nah, plug it in.
Photographer: Ian Waldie/Bloomberg

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On Saturday, the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group fighting against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, took credit for a strike that knocked out two key Saudi oil processing facilities.

At a single stroke, Saudi oil production was cut from 9.8 million barrels a day to 4.1 million, sending prices soaring. That means about 5% of the entire world’s oil production suddenly went offline. This is an unprecedented disruption – bigger in absolute terms than any of the famous oil shocks of previous decades: