> Meanwhile Saudi authorities indicated there was no criminal suspicion.
Saudi Arabia is a joke, and the US is sustaining that joke.
(& no, I'm not really concerned about people, companies, and countries who have been making their living off fossil fuels for the last century+; they've received already great benefit and they can find other sources of sustainence, preferably sustainable sources.)
Industrial civilization, at least until some really advanced stage where asteroids can be mined economically, will always have a shortage of some important resource.
Oil as an energy source has lifted billions of people out of poverty, so its value goes far beyond the industry insiders.
However, this is where nuclear power comes in: vast quantities of energy, with fuel sources not controlled by the United States.
Outside of that scope, poverty doesn't exist. It's a made up concept to describe the relative lack of material compared to some arbitrary, and ever-changing standard.
Did hunter gatherers live in poverty? Or were they plenty content with their lot in life -- spending some of their time on survival in food-resource-rich geographies, and the rest on socializing and primitive leisure?
How about uncontacted tribes in the Amazon Rainforest? Are you going to label them as "living in poverty" so they can be "saved" and "enriched" by Western Industrial Society's values?
"Lifting people out of poverty" is slowly becoming "think of the children"; or even "housewives with nervous ailments should be treated with sedatives and lobotomies. Their conditions are quite saddening, so we should help them post-haste. We know best."
Oil is currently being used to keep dictatorships and regimes afloat within the OPEC.
The United States does not control how many barrels of oil SA, UAE or other countries can push to the market.
It actually is a little (well, a lot) more complicated than you might think.