Finally, after more than a year of low prices, the US oil patch is really feeling the pain.
Rigs are down 65% from their peak of 1,609 in October of last year,
while the industry has incurred 250,000 job losses worldwide. Amid a
year of cost-cutting and improved efficiencies, the twenty-four largest
shale companies have still reported losses of more than $62 billion.
While some companies such as EOG say operations are profitable at $50, a
price of $40 seems a stretch for the vast majority of producers.
end partial quote from:
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Besides-Europe-Saudis-To-Capture-Russian-Market-Share-In-China.html
The cause of this price primarily is Saudi Arabia trying to economically survive the proxy wars in Yemen, Syria and Iraq and trying to survive threats to it's government from ISIS supporters in Saudi Arabia. So, you are going to see Saudi Arabia and other governments trying to survive these proxy wars driving down oil prices. Because their enemies will profit from higher prices.
Who needs high oil prices? ISIS, Russia, and Iran.
These are all enemies of Saudi Arabia and most Sunni Arab nations if not them all. So, one way to starve your enemy is to lower the price of oil so they don't have money to buy weapons or hire soldiers to defeat your government.
So, I would say the biggest threats to Saudi Arabia right now are the Houthis in Yemen, ISIS everywhere, and Iran and Russia in Syria. So, as long as all these threats interface I believe you can expect to see (at least Saudi Arabia driving down prices as low as they can manage) simply because they can survive the lowest prices and still make a profit. It is said they can break even and make a profit as low as a 25 dollar a barrel price. There is no other country that can do that at present.
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