Here is a real picture, link below plus summary:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-02-23/world-outside-us-and-canada-doesn-t-produce-more-crude-oil-than-in-2005

Outside the US and Canada, the world is in peak oil mode for more than 10 years now. There are many events which have brought about this bumpy production plateau. The sequence of these events has never allowed oil production to grow much over a longer time. We have seen the predicted negative feedback loops when oil production gets harder and more expensive. The end result of this phase is a weakened financial system with more debt and many government budgets in deficit.

The response to peaking conventional oil production was money printing and unconventional oil. In typical US style huge amounts of material, equipment and labour were mobilised to extract shale oil from tight rocks, a last resort after US production had declined since 1970. Skilfully designed propaganda of the oil industry employed the media to spread the news of an energy revolution. The objective of becoming independent of oil imports and thus beat OPEC excited the whole US nation. But it was overdone. The light shale oil – not your average crude oil – could not all be absorbed by US refineries and ended up in inventories. In a strange way, market forces did not work.

Later than expected US shale oil is peaking now. The latest case is the Chesapeake stock slump. If oil prices stay low for a longer time, oil production will ultimately go down and 2015/16 may be the global peak. Price spikes will be certain, further damaging the financial system.

And then we have the Middle East. The sinkhole around Syria is widening month by month. There is no way a revived US shale oil industry could compensate for any losses when fights start in the Persian Gulf.

Additionally the author states

"The breakeven is quite simply the line in the sand that determines whether extracting a barrel of oil is profitable or not. And this line in the sand is vastly different for private American producers than it is for kingdoms such as Saudi Arabia."

Well not quite, when the energy expended becomes more than the energy extracted this determines when a barrel of oil is profitable or not. It's call 'energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI, pretty simple really.

Additionally, the US shale ponzi financed energy plays, indicate a broader financial market destabilising influence. Current demand destruction is causing havoc. You also have a huge glut of supply, much of it being 'condensate' which pretty much goes unreported giving a false indication of surplus which is just not there.

The current oil scenario is playing out just as a few astute peak oil supporters have being saying all along, Vis, once peak conventional oil occurs (circa 2005) there would be a rush into alternates (shale, fracking etc) however wildly changing prices would ensure extreme boom/bust scenarios occurring, exactly what you see today. The dips and peaks will increase in intensity as this one-off source of energy plays out.

We have not, nor are we, working to address this energy dilemma, to our own folly, stupid really!

Yes Geoff, and and the rest of the world confronts saudi and Iraq, where the oil is so close to the surface, some of it bubbles up?

And we have seen figures which claim they can ,if push comes to shove, get the price of extraction down to a $1.00 a barrel?

The Saudis don't care given most of their "oil" revenue is coming from their refineries.

At some point other oil producers will need to emulate that example or just get out of the game?

I just don't know why we need to import any energy, given every vehicle plying our highways and byways can be rejigged and detuned to run on CNG. And we have copious quantities of it, and would be better served saving most of it for domestic use, rather than exporting it at fire sale prices!

Also, we are very well placed to grow our oil, as oil rich algae, produced in broad scale algae farming, where they only require 1-2% of the water needed for conventional irrigation.

Some types are up to 60% oil and under optimum condition can double their bodyweight and oil production capacity daily!

Some types naturally produce ready to use as is, Diesel and or Jet fuel. Extracting the ready to use as is fuel, is as simple as drying some of the filtrate and then crushing it.

The ex-crush material suitable as feedstock for an equally large petrol replacing ethanol industry.

I've read industry reports that state, even with fuel excise added. This homegrown fuel can be mass produced for just 44 cent a litre?

Now let's see if any of the warring oil producers can match that and all things considered, where it counts, at the bowser!
Rhrosty.