Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief and former ambassador to the US and UK, Prince Turki al-Faisal, has said that the US is the only one to blame for their current energy crisis.

“When you say that Saudi Arabia has not budged on the issue of the oil problems that America is facing, basically America itself is the reason for the state that they’re in because of their energy policy,” Faisal told state-run outlet Arab News during an interview aired on 2 May.

“President Biden made it a policy of the US government to cut all links to… the oil and gas industry, and he curtailed the oil production and gas production in the US… that has helped bring up the prices of oil,” Faisal went on to add.

The senior member of the royal family also said that the kingdom feels “let down” over Washington’s declining support for Saudi Arabia.

“Saudis consider the relationship as being strategic, but [feel] as being let down at a time when we thought that America and Saudi Arabia should be together in facing what we would consider to be a joint, not just irritant, but danger to the stability and security of the area,” Al-Faisal said, referring to the retaliatory airstrikes launched against the kingdom by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement.

The historic ties between Washington and Riyadh started going downhill after US President Joe Biden ordered the release of an intelligence report that concluded the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was done “on behalf” of and “approved” by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In the weeks following his inauguration, Biden also declared that he would end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. However, to this day the White House keeps approving weapons sales to Riyadh.

This relationship took a turn for the worse following the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, as both Saudi Arabia and the UAE refused US diktats to increase oil production levels.

The two Gulf nations have also made it clear they intend to uphold OPEC+ production quotas. OPEC+ includes the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ members and others, including Russia.

Recent reports have also indicated that Riyadh pushed for OPEC+ to abandon energy data from the US-funded International Energy Agency (IEA), believing it was biased towards Washington.