Saudi Arabia is losing its iron grip on global oil markets

Crude output in the Americas has already helped slash the OPEC+ slice of global supplies to some of its lowest levels

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shale by waging a price war in 2014 and 2020 but ultimately failed to rein in mounting American production.

This time around, the kingdom's officials are wary of making a bold move before Trump signals where he would like prices to be, they said. While the president-elect has previously said he wanted to ease pain at the pump for consumers, his campaign was funded by oilmen who also benefit from higher prices.

Crude output in the Americas has already helped slash the OPEC+ slice of global supplies to some of its lowest levels since the broader group's 2016 founding.

OPEC+ production cuts, pushed by Saudi Arabia, have made that even more uncomfortable for other members.

"It's really easy to be part of a cartel when a market is growing," said Jorge Leon, a Rystad Energy analyst who formerly worked for OPEC. "Nobody wants to be in a cartel where they are cutting production."

The upshot is that OPEC+ has lost some of its geopolitical heft in Washington. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt said the cartel's market power these days is "less than you would imagine" as oil producers elsewhere-Brazil, Canada and Guyana-pump gushers of crude.

"In the world that I live in, the challenge as we think about strategy is, how does the United States think about its status as an energy superpower?" he said. "We don't have to be so fussed about what OPEC or anybody else is doing, because we can focus on our own story."