Biden decides on Saudi visit as OPEC+ boosts oil production
WASHINGTON » President Joe Biden has decided to travel to Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks and is expected to meet with the kingdom’s crown prince, whom he once shunned for his brutality. It’s a visit that is coming together as OPEC+ announced Thursday it will pump more oil amid skyrocketing energy costs around the globe.
Biden’s first trip to the Saudi kingdom as president is likely to occur later this month but details have not been finalized, a person familiar with the planning told The Associated Press.
The White House on Thursday praised Saudi Arabia for its role securing an OPEC+ pledge to pump more oil and the president himself lauded the Saudis for agreeing to a ceasefire extension in its eightyear old war with Yemen that was also announced Thursday.
“Saudi Arabia demonstrated courageous leadership by taking initiatives early on to endorse and implement terms of the U.N.led truce,” Biden said in a statement after the 60-day extension of the cease fire was announced.
Those warm words mark a sharp contrast with some of Biden’s earlier rhetoric about the oil-rich kingdom. As a candidate, he pledged to treat the Saudis as a “pariah” for the 2018 killing and dismemberment of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s brutal ways. U.S. intelligence officials determined that the Saudi crown prince likely approved the killing of the journalist. Biden administration officials have been working behind the scenes to repair relations, discussing shared strategic interests in security and oil with their Saudi counterparts. The effort has played out as the fallout from the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the world’s No. 2 crude exporter after Saudi Arabia, and a Saudi-Russian brokered cap on oil production have raised crude prices and sent prices Americans pay at the pump to record highs.
Biden and Democrats face rising voter anger over the high prices, making the tight oil supply a top political liability.
Appeals from the U.S. and its allies for the OPEC+ group — OPEC nations plus Russia — to boost production more appeared to bear results Thursday. OPEC nations announced they would raise production by 648,000 barrels per day in July and August, offering modest relief for a struggling global economy.
The increase did not appear to ease concerns about tight supply. Oil prices rose after OPEC+ announced the increase.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged what she said was Saudi Arabia’s role “in achieving consensus” within the oil producers’ bloc. She thanked the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq as well.
Jean-Pierre also directly cited “the leadership of King Salman and the Crown Prince” in Thursday’s announcement of an extended U.N. cease-fire in Yemen, where Saudiled forces have led an unsuccessful war to rout that country’s Houthi rebels.