Chapter 626 Oil Weapons

Saudi Arabia's oil production will be temporarily suspended! After hearing this news, oil importing countries around the world fell into a panic. If they can't import oil from Saudi Arabia, then where can they make up for their own shortfall?

Almost at the same time as this news came, other bad news also came in. First of all, Iraq, in order to resist the aggressive US offensive in the north, announced an oil embargo on Western countries that supported the United States!

Now, after controlling Kuwait, Iraq has controlled more than 20% of the world's oil production, and its voice is also quite important!

Similarly, Iran’s oil minister issued a statement that since Iran’s oil fields use old-fashioned oil production technology, which is far behind, Iran needs to upgrade its oil equipment in the near future. During the upgrade, Iran will temporarily stop exporting oil to the outside world!

One piece of news after another plunged the Western world into complete panic.

Oil is the blood of the modern economy and the black gold of industry. Without oil, many factories will close down! The transportation industry will also stagnate due to the lack of oil, which is a strong blow to a modern country!

In the Western world, except for a few countries like the United Kingdom that can export oil, most countries have to import oil, which is tantamount to putting a knife on their necks!

United States, White House.

Bad news comes one after another, and the biggest bad news is the termination of Middle East oil exports.

For the United States, launching oil weapons to attack the Western economy is a direct challenge to the West. In order to safeguard its own interests, the United States will directly launch a war to solve the problem!

But this time, the situation is quite complicated! Because the United States has launched a war! The United States did not win the war, but made the situation worse. Especially the Soviet Union's dispatch of troops made the United States realize that the Soviet Union would never just stand behind and do small tricks.

"This is a challenge to us in the United States. We must mobilize more troops, enter Iraq, and overthrow the Iraqi government first!" The speaker was Weinberg. Up to now, the progress of the US military has not been very smooth, and the war is breaking out on the Tikrit front. In his eyes, this is because there are not enough troops. As long as more troops are mobilized, they will surely win!

"We can no longer mobilize our troops," Poindexter said. "Now that the Eurasian Bridge has been destroyed, our logistics and supply transportation all rely on airplanes, which makes it difficult to support more troops. Relying on cargo ships is too slow. Moreover, the reduction of troops stationed in Europe has reached a dangerous level. Once the Soviets really take action, we will have no reserve troops to meet the Soviet offensive."

The Soviets' land forces were originally stronger than NATO's, and they relied on their quality advantage to gain it. But now, as the army continues to be transferred to the Middle East, the number is even smaller. If it is transferred again, Europe is in danger!

"Soviet people, do you dare to start a world war?" Weinberg said disdainfully.

"Why didn't the Soviets dare to start a world war?" Poindexter said, "In the past, would we think that the Soviets were involved in Iran and Saudi Arabia? What about now? The Saudi royal family has been overthrown by the Soviets. Everything that has happened in the Middle East recently was done by the Soviets behind the scenes. So, is all this the Soviets' overall plan, or is it just the beginning?"

If this is really the beginning of a world war, the US economy will regress by decades! However, if a war really starts, perhaps all the problems we are facing now can be solved! Domestic economic problems, the increasingly serious unemployment problem in the country, and the problem that the US dollar may become waste paper will no longer be a problem!

"Okay, let's talk about how to deal with the current oil crisis." Reagan brought the meeting back to the topic of the meeting. World war? This was not something he wanted to consider for the time being. The United States was also a major oil importer. Without the oil from the Middle East, what would the United States do?

Now, only some small countries in the Middle East, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are still exporting oil, but this amount of oil is a drop in the bucket. More importantly, if the Soviets set up a checkpoint in the Strait of Hormuz as they did before, these countries will not be able to export a single drop of oil.

"Our strategic oil reserves can be used for half a month," said James Edwards, the Secretary of Energy. "At the same time, we can also put pressure on the UK to sell all their excess oil to us. However, there is no solution for our other NATO partners."

The North Sea is an important shipping route in Europe, and the seabed topography is complex and the offshore climate is harsh. Therefore, although oil fields have been discovered in the North Sea, there has been no large-scale exploitation. It was not until 1973 that the Fourth Middle East War broke out. The Arab oil-producing countries, dissatisfied with the Western countries led by the United States supporting Israel, used energy as a weapon and announced an "oil embargo", which led to a surge in oil prices in Europe and the United States, and successively affected various economic fields, which partly led to the global economic recession in the 1970s.

In order to cope with this situation, the North Sea coastal countries, led by the United Kingdom, turned their attention to the North Sea oil fields that had been dormant for many years. They successively exploited the Groningen gas field, the Ekfici oil field, the Brent oil field, etc. on a large scale. The discovery of these large oil fields not only alleviated the energy shortage of Western European countries such as the United Kingdom and Norway, but also made Norway the second largest non-OPEC oil exporter after the Soviet Union.

Now, in the 1980s, it is the peak time for the exploitation of the North Sea oil fields. Only by relying on the North Sea oil fields can the United States survive the Middle East oil crisis smoothly. However, this method of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs will arouse strong dissatisfaction from other NATO countries, and NATO will also collapse.

"It seems that our domestic oil fields can no longer be preserved and need to be exploited on a large scale," Reagan said.

The United States attaches great importance to energy security. When it was able to obtain cheap oil from the Middle East, many of its oil fields were sealed to meet emergency needs. And now, the time has come!

"At the same time, we must pay attention to the invention of new technologies." Reagan continued, "For example, using biological materials to produce biofuels, and extracting oil or oil substitutes from other minerals. We must survive the current crisis!"

Bush nodded. This was really good news for him! Because the Bush family was an oil giant in Texas. Now that the country's sealed oil resources were being mined again, his family would also benefit more.

"Militarily, we must overthrow the Iraqi government as soon as possible. As long as the Iraqi government is overthrown, the current problems will be solved," Bush said.