Saudi Arabia is trying to sabotage America’s shale oil boom We’ve been here before. By “here,” I mean Saudi Arabia throwing its weight around in the global oil markets and triggering what we can only call a kind of reverse oil shock as a result. The consequences were particularly visible last Tuesday, when Saudi Arabia slashed the price at which it is willing to export crude oil to the United States, even as it boosted prices to buyers in Europe and Asia. That sent the benchmark U.S. crude oil price — West Texas Intermediate — skittering down to $76.45 a barrel, a level not reached in three years. Welcome back to the geopolitics of oil. If you thought that crude oil prices were set simply by what is happening to the global economy — the forces of supply and demand, and the answers to pressing questions such […]