In 2016, OPEC had the brainstorm to pump up production in the hope that it would force US producers out of business. By flooding the market with petroleum, the expectation was that the energy commodity would drop to a level where US output costs would exceed the market price. Bankruptcies would return oil market dominance to the cartel. That strategy turned out to be a colossal failure.
Technological advances and a US administration that slashed regulations to attain energy independence caused production costs to drop. US daily oil production rose above the two other leading