Mohammed Bin Salman, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, is the de facto ruler, due to the declining health of his father, King Salman. His popularity, which it is impossible to assess in Arabia, in the absence of an independent investigation, is at its highest in the rest of the Arab world, where the press does not hesitate to compare him to a “new Nasser”.
Such favor is explained, according to an American editorial writer, by the “finger of honor” that Mohammed Ben Salman had inflicted, in July 2022, on Joe Biden. He had indeed traveled to Jeddah to obtain a significant increase in Saudi oil production, essential to lower the price of gasoline at the pump in the United States.
This request, formulated in the run-up to the American mid-term elections, was categorically rejected by Mohammed Bin Salman, a firmness that plays a lot in his current aura in the region.
Goal $80
Saudi Arabia is not only the most powerful economy in the Arab world, it also has, according to a recent census, a population of 32.2 million inhabitants, including 18.8 million Saudis (for two thirds aged under 30), where nationals of other petro-monarchies are a very large minority on their own territory (10% for example in the United Arab Emirates).
Mohammed Ben Salman has pledged on such demographic dynamism his “Vision 2030”, a vast program of modernization at a forced march, carried by a few projects as futuristic as they are contested. But, to achieve such an ambition, the Saudi leader has an imperative need to maintain the price of a barrel of crude at at least 80 dollars. Hence the snub to Biden in July 2022.
The Saudi leader entrusted this strategic file to his half-brother, Abdelaziz Ben Salman, Minister of Oil. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded as far back as 1960, was expanded in 2016 into OPEC+ to include ten new members, including Russia. And it is a privileged partnership between Riyadh and Moscow which has since then made it possible to regulate oil prices.
The target of a barrel at 80 dollars seemed within reach in April. But that was reckoning without the bogged down state in Ukraine of Russia which, to finance its campaign of aggression, is selling ever larger quantities of oil via third countries. India has thus seen the proportion of its oil imports from Russia increase from 1% to 40%, with transactions significantly lower than 60 dollars per barrel, the ceiling set in December 2022 by the G7 to escape Western sanctions.
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