The White House said on Tuesday that President Joe Biden believes that the United States needs to “reevaluate” its relationship with Saudi Arabia in the wake of OPEC+’s decision to slash oil production beginning next month, the Washington Post reported.

“I think the president's been very clear that this is a relationship that we need to continue to reevaluate, that we need to be willing to revisit,” White House spokesman John Kirby said in an interview on CNN. “And certainly in light of the OPEC decision, I think that's where he is.”

Kirby added that Biden “is going to be willing to work with Congress as we think about what the right relationship with Saudi Arabia needs to be going forward.”

Biden said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that there would be “consequences” for the production cut, though he did not go into further detail as to what those might be.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that “when OPEC made the decision to align their energy policy with Russia's war ... [it] further underscores that reasoning to realign that relationship, to reevaluate that relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

OPEC+, a group of oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, announced last week that it would slash its oil output by two million barrels a day, the largest cut to production since 2020, when it reduced output by a record ten million barrels per day in response to plummeting demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The cut amounts to roughly 2 percent of the world’s daily oil production.

“That move by OPEC Plus … could boost oil prices in the United States and worldwide, potentially hurting consumers during a tough winter, and its timing a month before the midterm elections was a political blow to Biden that some in the president’s circle saw as a personal shot at the president,” the Post wrote.

In response, per The Hill, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would suspend all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for a year. If passed, the measure would ban exports of munitions containers, weapon support, support equipment, spare and repair parts, technical and logistical support services, and related “elements of logistical and program support.”

On Monday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on the Biden administration to “immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend U.S. personnel and interests.”

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Finance and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters.