CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: OPEC Has a Crippling Problem: Its Members Can’t Stop Pumping.

Eight months after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries announced a plan for its 14 members and 10 allied countries to withhold almost 2% of the world’s oil every day to boost prices, seven of the 11 OPEC members that pledged to cut appear to be producing more oil than promised.

Crude prices have actually fallen, by 7.6% to $52.52 a barrel, since the beginning of the year—half what the cartel called a fair price just three years ago and a level that some say is here for the long term.

Previously, low production costs meant OPEC members profited even when oil prices fell. These days, members have ramped up government spending to keep populations happy and cover military expenses, and don’t have a cushion to let oil revenues slip. Their strained budgets can be covered only through increasingly high prices per barrel, and if prices are low they need to produce more.

The inability to control output poses a potentially existential threat to OPEC’s influence.

OPEC’s existential crisis is due almost entirely to frackers — have you hugged one today? — which means that after almost 50 years, we are indeed drilling our way out of that problem.