Those with a functioning memory may have thought that last week’s decision by Saudi Arabia to maximise oil production to crash oil prices and bankrupt U.S. shale producers was an early April Fool’s Day joke. Apparently, though, it is not, and collective amnesia seems to have gripped senior Saudis and other OPEC members alike about how disastrous the last Saudi Arabia-led attempt to destroy the U.S. shale oil industry from 2014 to 2016 actually was. Appalling though the consequences were last time for Saudi and its now-much-poorer allies, this time around things are likely to be much, much, worse. The last time the Saudis tried this exact same strategy in 2014, it had a much greater chance of success than it does now. Back then, it was widely assumed that U.S. shale producers could not produce oil on a sustained basis for a breakeven price of less than around […]