Energy planners in Saudi Arabia must be scratching their heads in wonder, even possibly despair. The oil-rich kingdom had picked itself up after threats of near economic collapse in 2015-2016 amid a then oversupply scenario in global oil markets with prices that dropped to multi-year lows, but now things are looking grim once again. After the kingdom’s ill-fated decision in late 2014 to open the oil production spigots and ramp up production in the midst of an oil supply glut mostly due to increased U.S. shale oil production, prices tumbled. They had reached over $100 per barrel in mid-2014, but by January 2016 had dipped below the psychologically important and economically damaging $30 per barrel price point. The results for the Saudis was cataclysmic, with problems ranging from historically high budget deficits (reaching a then-record high of $98 billion in 2015) to being forced to put in place its […]