If the West gets over the net zero death wish, the US, Canada, and North Sea can produce enough oil to supply everyone for 100 years. Drill baby drill!, Frack baby frack! And while you’re at it, build nuclear power plants.

I have no other comment except to congratulate the author on such a scholarly article. Geopolitics is three-dimensional chess indeed.

The commenters who’ve written so far rightly see the necessity of oil and gas. Energy is crucial to manufacturing, and manufacturing (labor-centric) economies focused on diplomacy, trade, and multipolarism are on the rise above capital-centric corporate-centric globalism, and economic hegemony.
In fact, the real issue is not simply oil, but the eventual demise of the Petro-dollar. Once the BRICS currency gets going it will spell the end of the US dollar as the worlds reserve currency. Right now BRICS+ and the SCO are working with development banks with eyes on working with the global South to create bonds linked to a new gold and commodities backed BRICS trading currency.
 Nations would be able to trade with each other in their own currencies, and equity backing of the trades would not insist that they hold US dollar treasury bonds the way it works in the world now, but this new BRICS currency.
This means sanctions will never work again. Endless wars, color revolutions, divide and rule with the US dominated rules-based economic order will not succeed in the future.
We are in late-stage hyper-financed global corporatism, and the politically imposed trojan horse called “free trade” (verses tariffs that protect citizen workers within each sovereign nation).
Right now I see this Ukraine war, and their desire to make war with China as their last grasp at power and economic domination. This is the end of the Bretton Woods economic model settled on after WWII. 

But why on earth would anyone be surprised that the West loses its monopsony power over a commodity that it has collectively declared to be an enemy of the planet and one which it intends to stop using as quickly as possible?

Did we expect the Arabs just to stop drilling and go back to the nomadic lives of a century ago? That they would ignore the demand for oil by rest of the world? What we’ve done with the Ukraine War is use Russia as a case study in how to cope with the loss of Western demand for hydrocarbons.

If this has come as a shock to anyone, they need to wake up. Perhaps then the West might avoid the completely unforced error of surrendering its present leadership position in the global economy to rising powers such as China, who depsite being supposedly authoritarian regimes, seem to care a great deal more about their own peoples’ interests than the various charlatans presently leading western nations.

What is missing in this article is mention of who was US President at the various times. Trump and his Jewish son-in-law was close to MBS. Biden in contrast labelled MBS a murderer. MBS knows that the result of next year’s election is highly uncertain. He does want to burn his bridges with the US if Biden’s replacement is MBS friendly.
Another reason for the Saudis and others not siding with China (as opposed to having a foot in both camps) is the assets they hold in the US and to a lesser extent European countries. They have watched how easy it is for Western governments to strip the holders of these assets.

Excellent information.I feel better informed
Net zero is hurting.We would all like cleaner air but setting impossible targets is ruining us.

That picture….

https://youtu.be/yzd2OYdqlh4

Thanks for this – very interesting.

When exactly did The West have control over oil?

Maybe for the brief period that USA was fracking more than just the West Texas Permian?

I have a philosophy M.A., but reading Husserl’s Logical Investigations is child’s play compared with trying to follow the convolutions of the competing interests involved here. You’d think ensuring affordable energy for your home population would qualify as keeping your eye on the ball when it comes to oil pricing and distribution; but, no, balancing the demands of allies who are at cross-purposes with each other over a myriad of unrelated issues, and figuring out the right mixture of conciliation, threats and bluster necessary for keeping them from behaving self-destructively, is the name of the game. It’s a game in which the short-and long-term interests of a bewildering variety of governmental, religious and corporate players frequently reveal themselves to be utterly opposed; and if anyone has managed to infer from this article just what might count as finally winning it, please share.

With oil the low cost producers that export have the whip hand but it could have been very different if the large importers had embraced a progressive carbon tax twenty years ago. It would have given a predictability on consumer prices that would have promoted alternative energy supplies earlier, depressed producer prices, generated substantial tax income to fund the transition. It might have actually resulted in stable and on average lower oil prices for consumers. Even if prices had been higher it would have been more than offset by moving wealth from the governments of the exporting countries to the governments of consuming countries. Accelerating diversification of energy sources would have increased self-sufficiency increasing geopolitical bargaining power. Instead we have sanctimonious carbon offsets, “Just stop oil” and sanctions that do exactly the opposite of what is intended. A carbon tax would have made sense irrespective of any impact on climate change.

The West and the geniuses across the pond may have coined BRICS, but the BRICS+++ are having the last laugh now…

Is it worth mentioning that Iran and Russia are scum?
The USA has tons of skeletons, but … Seriously.
Just get over this petrol centered world already, it has to be replaced regardless of these geopolitical sitcoms; it’s just obsolete. Get on with it

I feel like Ms. Thompson promised to show me a new world in the Middle East but all I got was one of those boring and meandering lectures at an academic conference.
MBS has said, “f**k you, United States. I’m not playing my Dad’s game.”
C’mon Ms. Thompson. Don’t count the silverware. Don’t gossip about who you saw talking to who in the library. When is the U.S. going to send a missile up MBS’s ass 😉 That’s what we want to know!