Oil-Consuming Nations Must Form Their Own Anti-OPEC+
The world can take away Saudi Arabia and Russia's power to push up crude prices by forming its own cartel to encourage renewable fuels and influence energy markets.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Photographer: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's complicity with Russian President Vladimir Putin in violating a Saudi-US agreement to lower oil prices underscores a simple reality: OPEC+ must go. The oil cartel's purpose was monopoly pricing. Its side effect has been catastrophic volatility. Its current mission appears to be to knee-cap the world’s last chance to avoid climate catastrophe.
By slashing production by 2 million barrels a day when oil was already at $90 a barrel, the two petro-tsars have just tipped their hand: They intend to lock in $100 oil prices, straining most of the world's economies at a time when they're already contending with inflation, food shortages and continued supply chain disruptions. The higher price benefits not just Russia and Saudi Arabia, but Iran’s ayatollahs and Venezuela’s anti-democratic President Nicolas Maduro.