Saudi Arabia and Russia want to corner the West with higher oil prices. But what sounds like a clever plan is actually a big risk. The oil states are playing with fire.
At the international oil conference in Calgary, the Saudi energy minister once again made it clear what a gifted storyteller he is. If the Saudi kingdom produces less oil, it is “not price gouging.” No, Saudi Oil Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman and his Russian colleague Alexander Nowak are only too happy to emphasize that their main concern is “stability in the oil market.” But with their major cutbacks in production, the autocratic duo is doing exactly the opposite: in the short term, they are primarily damaging the West and destabilizing the world order, but in the medium term they are also dismantling the traditional order on the oil market – and thus damaging themselves.