RE:Russia
That opinion is not based on facts. Russia generally doesn't agree with OPEC and historically never did except in 2001. At that time, Wall Street did not think they would be able to agree because of the historic fact that Russia is not part of OPEC and never will be.
But just as what happened in 2001, this historic agreement is holding and as a few people have stated, if you do the calculations on how much petroleum they produce per year, a $10 differential amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue per year lost for Russia and Saudi Arabia if they don't manage oil production.
Both Russia and Saudia can't afford to let the oil investment community down. The control oil production in their countries. Saudi Arabia directly via Aramco and Russia indirectly via state involvement in Rosneft, Gasprom and Lukoil being the top three.
Other member and non-member alliance nations would be crazy not to follow these top two dominating countries.
The false narrative in recent weeks apparently aimed at scaring the investment community that the US would become the #1 producer is laughable. First, they can't compete on price so once Russia and OPEC push oil to a "safe" trading range assuring rebalancing, which is what Wall Street wants, obviously the US has to get serious to reduce its dependency on other nations for its oil. As others have stated here correctly, the US consumes a lot more than it produces.
The US consumed 19.7 Million barrels per day in 2016, yet, it still produces less than 10 million barrels per day. The US has t catch up really fast and these net exporting nations know they can't allow Wall Street to dictated the price. Short sellers on wall stree will drive the price to zero. Professional traders make money where oil price goes up or down. And frankly, it's clear to see who is a short seller on Baytex Energy.
Relentless negativity and fear mongering. That why most investors have little regards for short sellers.