Friends don’t let friends drive when they are addicted to oil

Friends don’t let friends drive when they are addicted to oil

Who says Saudi Arabia isn’t a firm ally of the United States?

When President Bush visited the Kingdom of Saud last week and asked that the Saudis open their oil spigot a bit to help ease the oil crunch, the response was in the best interest of the United States. It was “no.”

Reasons for gratitude

A superficial ally might have said, why of course President Bush. If nothing else, in gratitude for your father’s efforts to protect the kingdom from Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait, we’ll pump some more oil for you.

Or on a more personal level, the Saudis may have wanted to show their appreciation to President Bush for his allowing all those Saudi relatives of Osama bin Laden to catch the first plane out of the United States after Sept. 11, 2001. Or as a gesture of gratitude to Vice President Dick Cheney for all he has done to convince the American people that it was Saddam Hussein, not Saudi nationals, who were masterminds and operatives in the 9/11 attack.

A superficial ally might have done that.

But the Saudis, apparently are far more sophisticated friends than that.

They realize that by pumping more oil, they would be feeding the U.S. addiction to oil. No doubt they recall President Bush using that exact phrase not long ago, and they don’t want to be seen as enablers.

And they realize that the more oil they pump, the more the United States will buy, adding to the already staggering balance of trade deficit in the United States. And they know that imported oil is a contributing factor to the continuing decline of the value of the dollar.

And so, when the president of the United States went to Riyadh and personally asked the Saudis to, in effect, help him head off $4- or even $5-per-gallon gasoline this summer, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi demonstrated nothing but tough love.

Big deal

The kingdom had already decided to increase production by about 300,000 barrels a day in June, President Bush was told, and that’s the best Saudi Arabia can do.

Best is apparently a relative term in Saudi Arabia (much as friend or ally is a relative term), because actually the kingdom has a production capacity of 11.3 million barrels a day, and the 300,000-barrel hike will bring June production to 9.4 million, or about 83 percent.

Meanwhile, oil is working its way toward $130 a barrel on the New York market and gas is approaching $4 a gallon right here in Ohio.

Which makes you wonder where we would be without friends like Saudi Arabia watching out for us.