Liam Denning, Columnist

Saudi Arabia’s World Is Coming Undone

Bulls are banking on the kingdom this week, but its future role could be far more disruptive.

April 8, 2020 at 4:00 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Shadows are falling over the kingdom.
Photographer: YASIN AKGUL/AFP/Getty Images

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Saudi Arabia is having a regular week: Facing off against Russia, taking phone calls from the U.S. president and supposedly cobbling together a plan to save the (oil) world. On Thursday, it will preside over an emergency meeting of OPEC+; the next day, a virtual gathering of G20 energy ministers.

As opportunities to strut the global stage go, this one comes at a big cost: Like most oil exporters, the country faces a cataclysmic drop in demand. But this isn’t just about the money. A new book lays out why the Covid-19 crisis offers a taste of a far-bigger problem: Saudi Arabia’s world is coming apart.