[jessaustin]

In fairness, USA oil production doesn't have the same sort of "tuning knob" that Saudi or even Russian oil production has. It isn't that government officials play no role, since they can delay permits or employ similar bureaucratic inertia (EDIT: and the bureaucrats in question consider many other values, like the environment, to be more important than international economic strategy), but mostly it's private investors who decide where and how much they will drill. I've heard speculation that the Saudis are currently attempting to burn those private investors and will cut back production after they've been chased from the market. If USA production costs are lower than those in Russia or elsewhere, however, it might be other producers who end up getting chased.