Saudi-Russian Oil Fling Becomes Marriage
Historically, it has never been a good idea for the dinosaurs to team up in order to do more of the same while an upstart eats their lunch from under their claws. Traditional producers are being sledgehammered by shale and they just can’t understand the dynamics at play. Their world is big, corporate, long term big style projects with huge bureaucracies running intricate web-like structures of distribution. Shale, on the other side, is quick, nimble, reactive, flat, dynamic, entrepreneurial and does not pay any heed to old structures. The old emperors can cling on for a long time, live off the substance they still have – or believe they have but their own weight will be their undoing. While shale goes through a ring of fire cleaning itself of fluff, others fluff up to unseen proportions.
It was supposed to be a six-month fling, but Saudi Arabia and Russia have instead signed up for eternity.
