And, it would seem to me, to wreck the economics of building the XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas.

Domestic shale oil and shale gas production in the USA, increasing production of tar sand oil in Canada, the XL pipeline to move Canadian tar sand oil to Texas, Russian and ISIS dependance on oil sales and production from new oil fields discovered off the coast of Brazil are all undoubtedly factors that influenced OPEC's decision to maintain oil production at current levels.

OPEC realizes that the more it can lower the price of oil, the more it can put the brakes on development of new oil supplies around the world.

It seems that our ability to both find oil and extract it from the ground is getting better and better all the time, and that's a problem for Saudi Arabia. They wants to remain the world's primary source of oil, but that's hard to do as higher oil prices make shale oil, tar sand oil, offshore oil and other souces of oil economic to develop and produce.