The White House’s chief energy adviser has said he is confident that Arab oil producers will not weaponise energy, despite mounting anger across the Middle East over Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza.
Amos Hochstein told the Financial Times that the level of collaboration between the US and Gulf producers, including Saudi Arabia, had been “very strong” over the past two years.
“Oil has been weaponised from time-to-time since it became a traded commodity, so we’re always worried about that, working against that, but I think so far it hasn’t,” he said in an interview. “We have two active wars in the world, one involving the world’s third-largest producer [Russia], the other in the Middle East where missiles are flying near where oil is produced, and yet prices are near the lower point of the year.”