A Secret, Failed Oil Deal: How the U.S.-Saudi Relationship Ruptured

On June 2, OPEC Plus announced they would move up the production increase scheduled for September — fulfilling the first part of the secret deal.

That same day, the White House announced Mr. Biden would soon make a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Democratic lawmakers remained skeptical of the efforts at rapprochement. Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House intelligence committee, said publicly that Mr. Biden should not travel to the kingdom. He and five other senior Democratic House members sent a letter on June 7 to Mr. Biden urging him to take a more guarded approach to Saudi Arabia — the most immediate issue, they said, was that “Saudi Arabia’s refusal to ​​stabilize global energy markets is helping bankroll Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine.”

The White House agreed to give the lawmakers classified briefings about their diplomatic efforts on a range of issues, including the Yemen war, Iran and Saudi Arabia’s relations with Israel. In briefings and talks with members of the congressional intelligence and foreign affairs committees, Mr. McGurk and Mr. Hochstein laid out the elements of a variety of agreements they had brokered with the Saudis, including the oil production boost intended to bring down prices.

Mr. McGurk said in a statement on Tuesday that diplomacy with the Saudis was mainly aimed at building stability and prosperity in the Middle East, “from establishing a truce in Yemen to countering Iran to fostering regional interconnectedness, including with Israel.”

For Democratic lawmakers who attended the briefings, the apparent oil pledge from the Saudis promised relief both for American consumers being pummeled by inflation, and for Mr. Biden and his embattled party as they headed into the November elections.

The price of oil was slowly dropping by the time Mr. Biden arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 15 for his meeting with Prince Mohammed and other Arab leaders. The image of the American president bumping fists with the Saudi crown prince he once vilified endures from the trip, but behind the scenes, White House officials believed they had at least shored up Saudi commitments on a number of fronts.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/us/politics/us-saudi-oil-deal.html