Abdulaziz said, "People are depleting their emergency stocks and using it as a mechanism to manipulate markets while its profound purpose was to mitigate shortage of supply." He further added, "It is my profound duty to make it clear to the world that losing emergency stock may become painful in the months to come."
Perhaps, Biden's intention was to lower the gas prices. However, Saudi believes that the release of reserve was to build further pressure on the oil market with the intention of manipulating the prices and thus trying to control the international oil industry.
Could Saudi be right on its allegations? Since the oil cold war began, US has already released around 180 million barrels from the strategic reserve. Analysts believe that the market is worried that Washington could release another 100 million barrels in the near future, which may have some short term gain, but it might hurt in the long term.
The dispute between the countries have intensified in the recent past. US had, in the past, shown its displeasure over Saudi-led OPEC's decision to cut down the oil production by 2 million barrels a day from November.
US warns of consequences to Saudi Arabia over OPEC's oil production cut
Now, Saudi blames US for manipulating oil market by releasing the reserve which was meant to handle oil supply crisis rather than to ease the short term rising cost.
On the other hand, Saudi is importing a large amount of crude oil from Russia. The ill-thought-out western sanctions against Russia have only boosted its economy.
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