Why Did Trump Just Give Saudi Arabia the Fast Track to a Nuclear Weapon?
Hitting EU Renewables Targets Could Slash Gas Demand a Quarter by 2030 Simon Watkins is a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author.
He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for… At the beginning of Donald Trump’s first term as U.S.
President in 2017, a senior White House official commented off-the-record toOilPrice.comthat: “We’re not going to put up with any more crap from the Saudis.” The comment had followed the end of the 2014-2016 Oil Price War that had seen the Kingdom rally its fellow OPEC members to ramp up their collective oil production in order to crash oil prices to cause the bankruptcy of as many American shale oil producers as possible, as analysed in depth inmy latest book on the new global oil market order.
shale sector as a potentially existential threat to its own oil sector, which provided around 90% of its total government revenues at the beginning of 2014.
Due to the stunning reorganisation of the American shale producers into a meaner, leaner, lower-cost oil-producing machine, the U.S.
won the Oil Price War, leaving Saudi Arabia and its OPEC brothers with hundreds of billions of dollars of lost revenue and fiscal deficits that would last for years.
For the remainder of his first presidential term, Trump kept up the pressure on Saudi to keep oil prices within the ‘Trump Oil Price Range’, asalso detailed in the book, regardless of the economic pressure this meant for the Kingdom and OPEC.
He also reminded Saudi Arabia of the fragility of their position in the most unequivocal terms in 2018 when oil prices were rising above the Range, saying: “We protect Saudi Arabia.
But I said ‘King – we’re protecting you – you might not be there for two weeks without us - you have to pay for your military’.” So, why has the U.S.
-- under Trump’s direct instructions -- just signed a landmark deal with the Kingdom that will allow it to develop a civilian nuclear power programme, which could more easily lead to the development of a nuclear weapon than any other similar deal made by the U.S.
in recent years?Related: The Trade Routes Iran Cannot Afford to Lose “It’s not just the civilian nuclear programme that raises questions, although that’s bad enough from the Israeli perspective, but the terms of the deal make it far simpler for the Saudis to morph this into a nuclear weapons development programme and that will concern everyone,” the same Washington-based source exclusively told OilPrice.com last week.
Indeed, Israel has historically regarded the prospect of its longstanding arch-enemy Saudi Arabia having even a straightforward civilian nuclear programme with horror.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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