clash-official
What most people don’t know about oil is that since about 2006, there has been a tectonic, global shift in the market. Previously, OPEC and its most important member, Saudi Arabia, were top dogs. They set prices, production levels. Everybody ate from their hands.
Round about 2007 or so American ingenuity kicked in. You see, if you keep oil prices high enough, Americans will figure out how to profit from them. Oh, look, and we did. Fracking was invented, which basically squeezes out the little amount of oil that’s under every ground. North Dakota, America’s Siberia (and I say that from experience), became a boom state. Over the course of about a decade, the United States went from a secondary afterthought in the global oil market to one of the top producers, rivaling Saudi Arabia itself.
Traditionally, when oil prices get low, Saudi Arabia props them up by cutting back on production. Not anymore. American oil has made them blink. When a giant nation like the U.S. suddenly becomes energy independent, it makes the energy providers blink.
Blink. Blink.
Saudi Arabia decided, and OPEC with it (reluctantly), to pump oil full blast, the plan being to drive the price of oil into the basement. American producers, they hoped, would then be driven out of business.