Without the comfort of Saudi Arabia's reducing production to balance the market and support prices, the cuts in supply are now coming from many producers with high break-even costs. Such adjustments on the supply side to lower oil prices have taken much longer to work themselves out than some industry observers expected. Almost a year after the decrease in prices that began in mid-2014, production is now declining in the most marginal basins, although in volume terms the reduction is small. Competition for market share among the large oil producers has intensified and is now the defining characteristic of global oil markets.

 The report of the first oil workshop in this series, held in November 2014 in Riyadh, can be found here.

CIEP's collaboration in this joint workshop was facilitated by a grant of Saudi Aramco.