It won’t happen overnight, but if US President Donald Trump’s plan to effectively control oil production in the Western Hemisphere comes to pass, Washington would oversee more crude than OPEC+.
With almost 40% of the global oil supply now coming from the Americas, the scale would allow the US to keep prices near $50 a barrel if Washington could make output decisions, according to Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas. Adding Venezuela — not a major producer today, but one with the potential to raise output by 2 million to 3 million barrels a day within a decade — would give the US the power to make OPEC+’s supply interventions impotent.
For Gulf producers, this poses a long-term risk that makes economic diversification efforts even more urgent. Sustained $50 oil would erode fiscal surpluses across much of the region and slow the growth of sovereign wealth fund assets.