Lower prices are due to Saudi Arabia trying to run frackers out of business. That’s the bottom line.
Predatory pricing from a predatory people.
Predatory pricing from a predatory people.
I want a policy / process that will bankrupt the Saudis. I want them destitute and begging. I want their wells to dry up so that they all have to go back to being nomads.
Possibly. Russia and Iran are also targets. Also simply to hold market share. If Saudi pulls back, the benefit of decreased supply accrues disproportionately to others.
“Lower prices are due to Saudi Arabia trying to run frackers out of business.”
It is true that they want that, and are trying to achieve that, but they are somewhat helpless to do anything else.
They have to pump, because they need the money. They are running big deficits trying to pacify their population with subsidies, and have been expending more on security with the war in Yemen. They have little else in their economy to rely on. They have been cashing in their US treasury bonds and overseas investments at a rapid clip.
As much as they would like to shut out American competition, they are more worried about Iranian competition, and the threat to their lives posed by a rich Iran. They are locked in an arms race with Iran, trying to siphon as much possible revenue away from Iran as they can.
OPEC has pretty much ceased to function as a mechanism to artificially inflate oil prices, because it always relied on the Saudis to restrain their production to do it.
The Saudis face a hard strategic situation - their oil may well be worth less in the future, so they need to monetize it soon. That is why they are looking to sell shares in the state oil company Aramco, and another big reason why they have to pump as much as they can now.
Their lowest cost fields are getting old, and their cost to produce is projected to creep up over time. Shale technology has rapidly lowered the cost to produce from shale, but only Americans are really doing it. In 5 or 10 years, huge shale deposits in Russia, China, Argentina and elsewhere could come into production as well, as the technology spreads. Solar cell and battery technology improvements seem on track to chip away at oil demand as well.
To drive oil prices back to sustained highs, it would likely require
- a significant global economic upturn (boom),
- an epic catastrophe in some producer nations, like a big war,
- or a massive government manipulation, like a big carbon tax (which would not help producers).