American oil producers will be forced to make drastic cuts in 2016 because of stubbornly low crude prices, an influential energy monitor said Friday, giving Saudi Arabia a chance to regain some of its lost clout in global markets. Oil prices that last month reached their lowest levels since the financial crisis have “dimmed the prospects for a recovery in U.S. drilling activity,” the International Energy Agency said in its closely watched monthly oil market report. The agency said tight oil—a type of expensive-to-pump crude that has driven American production in recent years—would decline by 400,000 barrels a day in 2016, a fall that already began in July. Along with expected drops in Russian and North Sea output in 2016, production outside of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could see the steepest cuts since the fall of the Soviet Union, the IEA said. The agency’s predictions are […]