This is the most telling segment...

[cprise]

It wouldn’t be the first time U.S. drillers are caught up in an OPEC battle for market share. In 1986, Saudi Arabia opened its taps and sparked a four-month, 67 percent plunge that left oil just above $10 a barrel. The U.S. industry collapsed, triggering almost a quarter-century of production declines, and the Saudis regained their leading role in the world’s oil market.

Its widely understood (and touted by the power brokers from that era) that the former Saudi expansion in production was the result of an agreement between US and Saudi politicians with the objective to damage the economy of the Soviet Union. (The Soviets had become reliant on oil export revenues.)

So now here we are pretending that the US decision to back a coup in the Ukraine in February 2014 has nothing to do with the sharp downward inflection of oil prices in that same month... This is all supposed to be a move (by OPEC's closest US allies) to retain market share against US producers who can't possibly compete with the former on price. We are supposed to read this garbage and ignore the largest oil producer in the world, Russia, who is known to be a former target of Saudi price wars.

The Saudis can recover market share from the more expensive producers any time they want. So there is no market-based reason for them to squander their dwindling reserves and drive profit margins down. The goals are political, and this article is stupid.