Before last year oil price crash in 2014, many oil producers bought insurance on their selling price of crude oil at approximately $90 or more, most above $100 per barrel. This was to protect oil companies from oil price shocks like the one the world suffered in the past year. Now this insurance is expiring this year. Maybe this year is what OPEC is waiting for. The year where majority of the oil price protection would give way, and many oil companies, particularly the smaller ones, would be vulnerable to the low oil prices. We can imagine OPEC eagerly waiting for this moment where many of the shale oil producers start to fail and disappear from the market, enabling OPEC to consolidate further market share from the US producers, while enduring low oil prices which were hurting their country's economic budgets. But it is probably worth it, as they ......