It’s no secret that the growth of U.S. shale oil has been a thorn in the sides of both Saudi Arabia and Russia. They have seen their market shares erode as the shale boom made the U.S. the world’s largest producer of crude oil. But Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, is a single entity that produces 13 percent of the world’s oil and controls 17 percent of the world’s proved reserves. That puts them in a very powerful position. They can withhold a lot of oil from the market, or they can flood the market with oil and crash the price. I have warned many times that Saudi Aramco’s power shouldn’t be underestimated, even as some were suggesting the shale oil had rendered OPEC (which they control) toothless. In an article I wrote in 2016, I observed: “OPEC is a big reason oil prices fell into $20s […]