Cheap Oil & The Middle East

Much has been made recently about the problems that the current, relatively cheap oil prices will have on U.S. oil shale producers. Evidently wells now in production are worthwhile to continue to use but drilling new ones is problematic.

Interestingly, cheap oil is also a problem for the middle east OPEC producers. They have to deal with reduced oil income as it pertains to maintaining their economies.

You can read more here, but as a summary I present the following graphic showing the break-even point for various countries: