Bad News On Two Accounts Coming Out Of The Mideast -- March 18, 2022

Both of these stories were posted earlier this morning. Now we get the updates.

The myth of spare capacity: it's now being reported that OPEC+ missed its production target (and the bar was set very low) by one million bopd. One link here.

Blinken: earlier it was reported that US Secretary of State was heading to / already in the Mideast to meet with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia and UAE. It's now being reported that those meetings are not happening "this month." 

Or perhaps ever.

I don't know about you, but it certainly seems OPEC+ doesn't like the US. My assumption is that Saudi will start to purchase military hardware and technology from Russia, not the US. 

Things are never so bad that they cannot get worse. President Biden has that skill set to make that happen. Paraphrasing former President Obama.