“The idea was for them to cause a drop in oil prices until the Fracking industry went bankrupt, causing liquidation of their assets.”
The costs of obtaining oil from fracking should also be dropping. The learning or experience curve suggests that costs will fall over time the longer a firm is in business
other things being equal. Firms that have been fracking for a few years learn the “tricks of the trade”: move employees where they are the most productive, the best places to drill and so forth and so on. Also, even if firms leave the industry and prices go back up new firms can
enter and begin fracking.
I am not sure you understand the problem.
Saudi knows how levered up the Fracking industry is in order to undertake operations.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-27/scariest-number-oil-industry-550-billion