But it costs more to produce here. Most oil wells in Texas for example are now fairly low volume and require a lot of expense to pump. The Saudi wells are so high volume they spend almost nothing to get the oil out. Also the Saudis generally control the output to keep the price high. If they wanted to they could flood the world with oil.
Gas is a different story but currently the price is pretty low compared to oil.
The Saudi wells are so high volume they spend almost nothing to get the oil out. Also the Saudis generally control the output to keep the price high. If they wanted to they could flood the world with oil.
This has long been the comforting conventional wisdom, but there have been contrarians. One wrote a book-length argument:
The argument is more-or-less that the Saudis have in fact been struggling just to keep output more-or-less flat. Their ability to open the taps to control prices is a thing of the past. They've made massive capital investments in the field operations, yet despite very high prices and an opportunity to make staggering profits, their output has only changed modestly and has never hit the peaks they've promised in the past (12 million bbl/day, I believe was what they claimed they could do; 7-8 million bbl/day is about all they've ever done lately).
Gas is a different story but currently the price is pretty low compared to oil.