Lower Oil Prices Force Saudis to Widen Their Circle of Friends<br />“Low oil prices have made the Saudi way of life unsustainable, so they have to find alternatives,” said Bruce Riedel, a former Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and the author of “Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States Since F. D.R.” “Any partner they can find<br />that can help them do that, they are going to embrace enthusiastically.”<br />The most surprising partner is Russia, which remains on the opposite side of the Syrian civil war<br />and is also trying to build better relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter regional rival.<br />And when China needed new energy supplies for its expanding economy in the early years of the new<br />century, Saudi Arabia was there with an ambitious oil exploration program to meet the new demand.<br />“The Saudis are compensating for their lost power in OPEC<br />and they are showing pure geopolitical pragmatism in their new energy and foreign policy,” said Bill Richardson, a former energy secretary and ambassador to the United Nations.<br />The changing nature of the energy industry — the oil production boom in American shale fields, the persistence of lower crude prices,<br />and the rise of natural gas — has transformed the geopolitical equation.<br />A flood of oil from American shale fields has enabled the United States to slash imports of OPEC oil<br />and begin exporting to markets that were once dominated by Saudi crude.
