For most of the Age of Oil, groups of producers have tried to control its price. From the 1920s, that strategy was co-ordinated by the Railroad Commission of Texas, supported by other US states and federal authorities. Then from the 1970s it was Opec, the producing countries’ cartel.
The plunge in the price of crude since the summer of 2014 has made it clear that the market has escaped anyone’s ability to control it.
A combination of technological progress, in the shape of the spectacular success of US shale oil production over the past five years, worries about the slowdown in China and other emerging economies, and a shift in strategy by Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has caused a global glut of oil that sent prices tumbling by more than 50 per cent.