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OPEC+ Tells the World: Your Energy Crisis Isn’t Our Problem

OPEC+ Tells the World: Your Energy Crisis Isn’t Our Problem

OPEC+ ignored demands for a bigger oil-production increase, instead blaming their customers’ economic woes on soaring prices of natural gas and coal. 

“Oil is not the problem,” Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told reporters after a meeting on Thursday, when the cartel emphatically rejected President Joe Biden’s request to quicken the pace of its supply hikes. “The problem is the energy complex is going through havoc and hell.”

After a brief meeting on Thursday, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies approved another 400,000 barrel-a-day production hike for December. That’s a pace that major consumers say is too slow to sustain the post-Covid economic recovery, with the U.S. asking for as much as double that amount to help alleviate inflation. 

If people are serious about attending to the real cause of the energy crisis they should focus on supplies of natural gas to Europe and Asia, and the related infrastructure, the prince said. He displayed, at length, a chart comparing the double-digit percentage increase in crude prices since the summer against triple-digit jumps in the cost of gas and coal.

“Look at what Brent is doing compared to the rest,” Prince Abdulaziz said. “The 28% that happened to oil is nothing.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.