I traded crude oil professionally until early 2022 and I remember that was how we justified low domestic production in mid 2021 as well (i.e. "producers think t

I traded crude oil professionally until early 2022 and I remember that was how we justified low domestic production in mid 2021 as well (i.e. "producers think these prices are temporary, so they aren't investing"). In retrospect (and these are all guesses with hazy memory) we probably overestimated the cost of turning an oil well on and off. But exchanging text messages with OPEC to price-fix is damning. An active right wing party would decry this as foreign interference and communism (where's the free market?). Even ignoring the market impact, how can you let domestic producers collaborate with foreign governments to control such a serious macroeconomic input like this? It's like China paying Intel a bribe to produce worse chips.