Who OPEC Sacrificed for the Greater Good

OPEC has achieved an unprecedented degree of compliance with its current output target, exceeding its agreed production cut by 44 percent, but all is not as rosy as it might seem on the surface. This newfound sense of purpose hides a huge cost borne by two of the group's members that found themselves on the wrong end of Saudi oil policy as prices collapsed and who may struggle to recover from the consequences.

The nature of this cost was clearly identified on Feb. 23, 2016 in a conference in Houston, where Saudi Arabia’s then-petroleum minister, Ali Al-Naimi, explained to a packed room of investors and senior industry figures why his country was flooding the market with crude. Perhaps -- irritated by journalists who liked to characterize his country’s policies as a war on booming U.S. shale supplies -- Al-Naimi wanted to set the record straight.