"the Saudis got what they paid for"
The Saudi's wanted the US to stop importing Saudi oil? Can you explain why?
No, they don't want anyone to stop importing.
"The Saudis got what they paid for" comment means this to me.
OPEC controls the amount of their crude oil production.
If they cut production the price of crude rises.
If they raise production levels crude prices fall.
The longer they can keep the world market crude oil prices down, the less profitable it is for those producing crude in countries not involved with OPEC.
They can starve out those not as wealthy as they if they can keep crude prices down by flooding the market with less expensive OPEC crude.
Many oil producers here in the USA have suffered due to the low prices we see at the pump. Some have shut down just due to lack of probability at current prices.
OPECs price controlling strategies work very well, they are "mostly"
filthy rich, at least the OPEC controlling entities are. Some countries involved in OPEC that aren't so rich have suffered through this period of high production/low price as well but they are too small to have much of a voice within the ranks of the OPEC filthy rich guys aka Saudi's.
Recently the Covid Pandemic has had a huge effect on oil producers.
With all the shutdown businesses and so many staying at home the demand for oil has fallen off, that coupled with OPEC having the world market flooded with surplus crude is why we've seen really low prices at the pump.
It's also relevant to OPECs recent change in strategy, they've cut production to get the crude prices back up.
We produce a lot of oil here in the US but we also burn a lot.
Our current export of oil has little to no effect on the world market crude prices.
I seriously doubt no matter how much we step up production here will change the prices we see at the pump.
Our oil companies will match the Saudi controlled world market price to increase their profits or in some cases make them profitable at all.
Another thing to keep in mind is it's much cheaper for the Saudi's to produce crude oil than it is for the US oil companies to produce shale oil by fracking.