The Saudi royal family can make a profit at $10/barrel for a few years, then they lose control of the country and the oil because they had to stop most of the bribes (social services, etc) they were paying the population to continue to go along with the regime. (The Russian government is in a similar situation to some extent.) But yeah, someone in Saudi will continue to sell the oil, maybe after a few months or a few years of chaos, even if they can only get $10/barrel.

I don't see that as a problem. You use what you have. As a country you have some resources and you need to learn make best use of them. Norway is producing gas at a very substantial cost, yet it was able to save a huge amount of money and current situation is largely a speedbump rather than catastrophe.

It seems the problem is not with the costs of production but rather maturity of the country that wields the power over the resource, whether it understands that a) they are largely dependant on it, b) it is not given that tomorrow the prices will be the same, c) it will run out some day and d) it is easy to spend money now but actually you have to be frugal to save them for when it runs out.

Noraway's costs are actually about middle of the road. Higher than middle east, N. Africa , S. America but much lower than N. America and the rest of Europe. This is impressive when you account for their environmental standards and relatively challenging locations.

Their huge savings is the combination of saving but also very high cost of living & taxation. The state provides a lot but also places high taxes on everything.

I live in Alberta where we have relatively low taxes and no oil savings. We've been boom/bust for our entire existence, but one huge difference - we've subsidized huge parts of the entire country during those good times. Those transfer payments add up to an incredible amount of money.