The Sauds Can Never Win

It is becoming increasingly apparent that while the Sauds were able to damage the US fracking industry in its price war, it was a Pyrrhic victory. The only losers are US banks.
When oil was holding steady at $100 per barrel and the US started to tap into their shale reserves, the banks went nuts. At that price of oil almost any well was profitable. Anyone could get a loan and the money ran free. People were drilling in previously unprofitable fields, and with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing the wells were producing. It was a true free for all where there were almost no losers. Everyone was getting rich. And like everything that seemed too good to be true, it was. The US was adding millions of barrels per day to a stable market. This was delayed by the US adding to its strategic reserve, but once Cushing showed some signs of being at capacity, the market panicked and over corrected. Oil dropped to the twenties, and things started screeching to a halt. US rig counts plummeted as banks were no longer lending money to finance new drilling. All the fly by night companies were not able to operate with oil being that cheap, folded under their debts. A wave of bankruptcies flowed across the industry, and the lenders are the ones who took the hit. The US is left with the companies who are the most skilled and efficient, and can drill a well in record time. A core of skilled drillers who are profitable at $40 per barrel. And their knowledge and skills are trickling across the rest of the industry. Even with the current undervalued oil price, the US rig count is ticking up. I will take something drastic to get the US rig counts back over a thousand, but this is not a crippled industry. They were beaten down, but not broken. And the Sauds can not hurt them anymore. Despite what they say, Saudi Arabia is producing at max capacity. And the price of oil is creeping back up. As global production drops, the price of oil will keep increasing and more and more US shale fields will become profitable again. All the Sauds managed to do in their insane market share grab was destroy their own GDP and hurt some US bankers. All the while losing Saudi Arabia the important designation of global swing producer.