Having said that, it's closer today than it has ever been. The Saudis have every intention of driving the price downward in order to halt US production and they think this "strategy" is going to work. Unfortunately for them, the oil is here and it's not going away. Their days of 130/barrel oil are almost over. What they WILL accomplish is disruptive and will cause wild fluctuations for the foreseeable future, but in the end, the market is going to win over. They can't play the monopoly game very long without going broke doing it. I read somewhere a while back that 70-80 dollars was the threshold for profitability on shale oil, not sure how accurate that is. In the meantime, even more reachable oil will be discovered in US/Canada, further eroding the sustainable price. At least that's my possibly misguided theory of things to come...
but in the end, the market is going to win over.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/invisiblehand.asp
But government and big business don’t like it because it can’t be controlled, but they keep trying.
The fun part is that as we get more self-sufficient, the towelheads best customer is becoming China.
Those lovable guys with mafia business practices and 1.5 billion expendable people to enforce them.
The next decade won’t be nearly so much fun for the mideast.