Venezuela's unprecedented supply collapse

Production is likely to flirt with 1m barrels a day as the country's problems mount

When Opec's Gulf powers, led by Saudi Arabia, decided to keep the taps open in November 2014, flooding an already oversupplied market with crude, their target was America's shale producers. In pushing prices down, Saudi Arabia hoped to sap momentum from the booming tight oil industry and impose discipline on what they saw as profligate drillers. Shale bowed but it didn't break, and has since roared back to new highs. Venezuela's oil industry hasn't been so resilient, to say the least. That 2014 decision was a fateful one for Caracas and helped break the back of Venezuela's energy sector. Caracas was in a precarious financial position already, but at the time there was growing optimism among