RE:What a mess!I feel your pain Notwrong. And so do a lot of other people, including all employees of energy companies. But we must look through the savaged oil and gas stocks, their prices and those of the actual commodities, (all turned turtle as it were), to realize that in the long game, the present moment is completely unsustainable. IMO the Vienna OPEC decision was Saudi-centric and we have yet to see whether, as a theory, it will stand up, - and for how long. Right now it certainly has the U.S. rig count snapping to attention. If we were to inspect the current scene in Russia, no doubt we would find the bilge pumps running 24/7 in their basement. Russians pen the best tragedies and I think we have another in the making here. Theirs is the double whammy, a low oil price oil and stiff sanctions, - for them a perfect storm. Within OPEC not all members are not equal. Yes, there is that inner circle, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. If you think of these members as planets and the ones closest to the sun, then surely Venezuela and Iran are Neptune and Pluto. Many within OPEC disagreed with the decision. King Abdullah is 90 and in frail health. Some say that the Saudi oil minister was following Abdullah’s strict wishes, but a successor to the throne might opt for a different approach. In rough figures the Saudis pump 9.5 million barrels a day but consume about 2 million leaving roughly 7.5 for export. The Russians pump about 10 million a day and use about ½ of that, exporting the rest. The cartel’s lowest cost producers are that inner circle. But is their total exportable output of sufficient size to impose their will upon the rest world for any lengthy time? Note that any substantial increase in their output would require spending on costly infrastructure. Would it be worth the expense? But moving away from this Saudi-centric view, who are the most grievous offenders? Is it the Americans who only produce 9 million barrels a day when they consume 16? Surely it must be the exporting nations who must get their house in order and come to some honorable agreement on export quotas. Perhaps John Kerry will have to whisper something in the Saudis’ ear. America has had 2 wars in the Middle East to preserve the status quo of that inner OPEC circle. Maybe it time for payback. But one other quirk of fate needs be mentioned. It was unrealistically high prices engineered by OPEC for many years and the “anxiety premium” priced into oil through Middle East politics along with the idea of making the west “pay” that that gave rise to high oil prices in the first place. It created the opportunity for the shale innovation and actually financed it. It’s not likely that in the long game America is going to be shoved off its rock by the Saudis, OPEC or the Russians.