, Columnist
Saudi Oil War Goes MAD
Four years of sanctions have left Tehran much less vulnerable to falling prices.
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Saudi Arabia has often counted on having the oil market's equivalent of a nuclear option.
When the kingdom grew tired of Opec members exceeding their quotas in 1986, it opened the spigots and crashed prices to below $10 a barrel, counting on accumulated profits and low production costs to shore the country up against the flood of excess crude. When Saudi wanted to snuff out U.S. shale oil producers last year, it boosted daily output from 9.5 million barrels in December 2014 to 10.6 million barrels by July. Prices fell 30 percent over the course of the year.