A four-million-bbl/d surge in U.S. oil production in the last five years, combined with stiff and growing competition for Asian oil markets between OPEC countries and Russia, forced a major restructuring of global oil markets in 2015 as prices collapsed due to oversupply. Rather than cutting back supply to buoy prices as it has done in the past, Saudi Arabia, the world's lowest-cost operator and the global swing producer, decided to leave the taps open and let the law of supply and demand reign over the markets. Canadian operators, complacent after five years of uninterrupted growth due to artificially high prices, were collateral damage in the global oil realignment.
展开▼
