How much oil does a nation need to produce to warrant a U.S. intervention?
Somewhere between 500,000 and 1.8 billion barrels per day, according the U.S. News and World report columnist and blogger Rick Newman. Click here to read Newman’s analysis. “Wherever the next bombs fly, one safe bet is that the ultimate target will be oil,” he writes.
As the Middle East increasingly descends into chaos, Newman tries to forecast which countries will see interventions and which won’t based on daily oil output, alone.
“Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, and Egypt are probably safe from Western intervention,” he writes. “Qatar and Kuwait are blissed out on oil money, with little likelihood of upheaval. Algeria is a wild card that could end up like Libya, if its dictator loses control. Iraq and Saudi Arabia are both governed by regimes friendly to the United States. … And Iran is the most problematic big oil producer, but it’s also the riskiest to tangle with.”
