[SeeGeeWhy]

This market share defense talk is BS.

70% of Saudi production is burned domestically for power generation, desalination and transport fuel. 80% of what is exported goes to Asian refineries. 5% of what is exported goes to the US.

5% of 30% of their total production is not what you move mountains and potentially put global economies into chaos for.

The US's largest import source by far has always been Canada.

The nature of this market reality is this - the US is quickly becoming the world largest oil producer because of expanding shale oil exploitation. However, they cannot export a majority of that production due to their own laws. The short of it is that the US is becoming more self sufficient, but based on the facts above, this impacts Canadian producers far more than it does Saudi Arabia. Second, US oil demand is not growing because they do not manufacture the way they used to and the economy is still in a slow recovery. As opposed to China, who's demand is now larger than the US and still growing.

So... If this is indeed a play to control market share, it Would have to be pre-emptive in nature. Meaning, the US must be considering changing it's export laws which indeed would allow US production to threaten the Saudi's grip on the largest and fastest growing oil consumption market in the world.

But the thing that really makes me wonder is the fact that the Saudi crown invests in oil plays all over the world to get access to increased ownership in global production without depleting their domestic reserves unnecessarily. Why wouldn't the crown invest in the companies drilling the shale oil plays to accelerate their rapid decline and kill the entire field for good by encouraging it's short term exploitation? I know there are strong rules against foreign takeovers in the US energy business, but is partial ownership treated with the same scrutiny? And couldn't they flow the money through secondary vehicles to obscure where the funds are coming from? The book is coming out on the reserve potential of these shale plays, and the inexperienced operators are using fracturing systems that do not optimize the productivity or longevity of these wells. I believe it is a huge bubble and the sauds would be wise to encourage it's over development as opposed to deflating prices in order for the industry to cool down and get smarter about how it's going about it's business.