Biden Advisers Secretly Travel to Saudi Arabia in Effort to Lobby For More Oil – Report

The US government’s ongoing pressure campaign for more Saudi oil seems unlikely to meet with success, with the Gulf state’s foreign minister saying yesterday “the kingdom has done what it can” in terms of production.

US officials are currently on a secret mission to Saudi Arabia aimed at pushing the Gulf state to increase oil production and normalize relations with Israel, according to a report published Wednesday. Citing “three current and former U.S. officials,” Axios says White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk and State Department energy envoy Amos Hochstein touched down Tuesday.

The news that two senior Biden advisers have reportedly been dispatched to Riyadh comes the same day that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm described US President Joe Biden as “obsessed with the fact that gas prices are so high.”

But with Biden looking for relief at the pump for US consumers ahead of November's midterm elections, it seems the Saudis aren’t too keen to help.

"The kingdom has done what it can,” Saudi Prince Faisal bin Farhan told the World Economic Forum at Davos on Tuesday. "As far as we are aware, there is no shortfall of oil."

The country has so far ignored repeated calls to ramp up production to cushion the largely self-inflicted impacts of anti-Russian sanctions on energy markets in the West. Instead, in an interview published Tuesday, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told the Financial Times that Saudi Arabia expects “to work out an agreement with Opec+,” which, he noted, “includes Russia.”

Abdulaziz went on to suggest that politics should be kept separate from Opec+, and that the “world should appreciate the value” of the energy alliance.

“This situation needs people to sit together, focus, take out the masquerade and the so-called political correctness . . . it’s about trying to relate to existing reality and find remedies to it.”