Saudi price war against shale

At the OPEC meeting on November 27, 2014, Saudi Arabia rejected calls to cut production and instead held its output level — deliberately letting prices fall in an effort to drive higher-cost American shale producers out of business. Brent crude dropped from $115 in June to $50 by January 2015 and below $30 in early 2016. The strategy partially worked — shale production growth stalled and dozens of small producers went bankrupt — but it did not break the industry. By 2017 American shale was rebounding with lower break-even costs, and Saudi Arabia had absorbed roughly $400 billion in lost revenue, the equivalent of two years of full government spending. The price war demonstrated the limits of the OPEC swing-producer strategy in a multi-source oil market.