- President Joe Biden, who traveled to Saudi Arabia in July, said he didn’t go there for oil but added that he and the prince “privately reached an understanding that oil-producing states would agree to increase output at an Aug. 3 meeting.”
- In August, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced a boost in output — 100,000 barrels per day. The increase, equivalent to 0.1% of global demand, certainly wouldn’t help the U.S., which consumes about 20 million barrels a day.
- “The increase of 100,000 bpd will be one of the smallest since OPEC quotas were introduced in 1982, OPEC data shows,” Reuters reported at the time.
- But that was great news compared to what OPEC and the Saudi prince did on Wednesday.
- While gas prices in the U.S. dropped for 99 days in a row, they’ve risen again in recent weeks. Yet OPEC thinks there’s a glut in the world market for crude oil and announced it would slash oil production by 2 million barrels a day.
