When oil is expensive, lots of techniques are available to extract it, shale oil becomes worthwhile, for example. Saudi Arabia is driving the price down by sell

When oil is expensive, lots of techniques are available to extract it, shale oil becomes worthwhile, for example. Saudi Arabia is driving the price down by selling a lot of oil for very low prices. If you're the United States or Russia, oil production is a relatively small part of the GDP. We use a lot of oil, but don't really care much where it comes from. Iran on the other hand, that's like 1/4th of their GDP. (I don't know if Iran or ISIS or even Iraq is the target. I don't think Saudi Arabia would have a problem with hurting any of them) Price changes there hit very very hard. Directly it lowers oil employment, it lowers tax revenue, and it affects all sorts of businesses in the area. Unemployed people don't go out to restaurants for lunch, which hurts employment and tax revenue even more. So then, the problems become political. Countries and organizations need to start rethinking policies about how nice they're going to be to their neighbors. I don't know what Saudi Arabia's goal is, but with a trillion dollars in the bank, they can sell at a loss for a long long time. Prices that low cut off the air supply for several of their neighbors. I think we'll see big changes in middle eastern governments policies before prices go back up.