Boris Johnson has compared President Putin to a drug dealer and said that Saudi Arabia could help end western “addiction” to Russian oil and gas.
As he prepares to fly to the Gulf tomorrow to plead with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for more oil production, the prime minister insisted that “we need to talk to other producers around the world about how we can move away from that dependency” on Russian energy.
He said it was “vital — if we are going to stand up to Putin’s bullying, if we are going to avoid being blackmailed by Putin in the way that so many western countries sadly have been, we have got to get ourselves off Russian hydrocarbons”.
Speaking to reporters at Lancaster House in central London, Johnson said: “Vladimir Putin over the last years has been like a pusher, feeding an addiction in western countries to his hydrocarbons. We need to get ourselves off that addiction”.
He said this was “one of the reasons I’m going out to the Gulf” as he avoided direct criticism of the Saudi regime after an international outcry at the mass execution of 81 prisoners at the weekend.
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Asked if the war in Ukraine meant allying with other unpleasant regimes, Johnson said: “We want to build the widest possible coalition to ensure that we focus on what is happening in Ukraine, the effect that is having on the price of oil and gas.”
Consumers were already feeling the cost of Putin’s invasion and “greener solutions” were needed to stop Britain being so dependent on foreign energy, Johnson said.
“There is no question at all that the spike in oil and gas, that is being felt by British consumers, by everybody who has a central heating system, everybody in this country is seeing the effect of that spike in prices,” he said. “What we need to do is build long-term security of energy supply in this country.”
Among the leaders Johnson will meet are Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. Johnson wants the oil-rich nations to use their spare capacity to bring down wholesale oil prices, which have increased since Russia invaded Ukraine. Britain has vowed to phase out imports of Russian oil by the end of this year.
This morning Johnson said the West’s energy dependence on Russia “is why [Putin] feels able to bomb maternity hospitals. That is why he is emboldened enough to launch indiscriminate assaults on fleeing families. And as his bombs fall, the cost of oil and gas rises still further, meaning less money in your pocket and more in Putin’s.”
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He continued: “We cannot go on like this. The world cannot be subject to this continuous blackmail. As long as the West is economically dependent on Putin, he will do all he can to exploit that dependence. And that is why that dependence must – and will – now end.”
But Johnson insisted that “Putin’s strength — his vast resource of hydrocarbons — is also his weakness,” because “he has virtually nothing else”. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Johnson said: “Putin’s Russia makes little that the rest of the world wants to buy. If the world can end its dependence on Russian oil and gas, we can starve him of cash, destroy his strategy and cut him down to size.”
Russia exports about five million barrels of oil a day, but Saudi Arabia has about two million barrels a day worth of spare capacity, and the United Arab Emirates has one million a day. But the visit is controversial because of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. On Saturday the country executed 81 people, which Crispin Blunt, a Conservative former justice minister, said “represents a new low for human rights and criminal justice in the kingdom”. He urged Johnson to “make clear to the crown prince how appalled friends of the kingdom are”.
The prime minister was defended by Lord Hague of Richmond, the former foreign secretary, who told Times Radio: “We don’t only do business in the world with countries whose political systems we approve of.” Otherwise, he said, “we’d be a very small economy in the world and people would be out of work”.
James Cleverly, a Foreign Office minister, also defended Johnson’s decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. “The prime minister is also right to try and ensure that in the short-term we can have alternative sources of energy whilst ultimately moving towards what our goal is, which is a more economically and ecologically sustainable source of energy generation, and that’s renewables,” he told Times Radio.
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Cleverly said he had “no doubt” that Johnson would convey Britain’s “longstanding and principled” opposition to the death penalty.
