Human rights have gone for a toss at the moment, as both the US and EU are racing to secure energy supplies. And that is the reason why Biden went to Saudi Arabia with a begging bowl in hand. But then the Saudis snubbed Biden and rather than increasing their production, they actually decreased the output quotas. Same with Qatar as well. They bluntly told the Germans that if they want Qatari gas, then they need to enter in to long-term partnerships stretching for 20 years. Makes perfect sense, as the EU wants to phase out fossil fuel usage in the medium term.
US has been using Arabs (mainly Saudis) for decades to manipulate the energy market. After all that is the whole idea behind "
petrodollar". They print more dollars out of thin air which causes inflation but to export it to other countries they have to order Saudis to increase oil price so that other countries have to "buy more USD" to be able to afford same amount of oil they used to import. But at the same time high energy price causes inflation and/or recession in US so they have to order Saudis to reduce the energy price soon by increasing their production, that way they control inflation and recession in America while the rest of the world suffered from inflation (ie. US exported inflation).
These days that plan no longer works simply because there is a war going on between Eastern bloc and Western bloc. This means if Saudis (or any of the others) try to play the same game as before means a country located in Eastern Bloc is playing a Western game and it would have to face dire consequences from the whole bloc.
Qatar is already very close to Iran and that means they are playing with the regional hegemony.
They Saudis are also whipped into accepting the hegemony. They are also prevented from playing their old game. Russia has already warned them. China has already warned them and has promised to buy their oil. Iran has already sent enough messages to let them know whose the buss.
The tensions are also rising in the energy rich region too since the West is getting more desperate. Remember I talked about the Yemen resources being stolen? The armed forces of Yemen are already getting busy, they've already shot warning shots towards the facilities stealing their oil and recently they took one step further and directly attacked a tanker trying to steal their oil. Another tanker was hit in Oman sea and another British ship was scared of after it saw the swarm of drones above its head.
Another tension is increasing in the separatist occupied Northern Iraq and Syria (oil and gas rich). As I said Turkey is once again trying to prove to be useful for NATO. They are trying to annex part of Syria and Iraq that are gas and oil rich to steal those resources and export it to EU. Specially since their plan to "delete" Armenia and connect to Caspian sea (another energy rich source) for NATO failed miserably after armed forces of Iran crossed the border into Armenia for protection.
Iran + Iraq + resistance armies are already planning to enter and take full control of these regions preventing the Turkish plans while clearing it from terrorist cells that includes the US military bases in the region one of which was already hit hard over the past month in our constant bombardment of the terrorist positions.
It's interesting to see how all this going to unfold (since we are avoiding any major conflict in the entire region) and how it would affect energy prices over the coming month or two.