Nick Fountain

And that may seem like an

Enviable position?

Because when prices get too high, you get to pump more and sell it at a nice price in order to bring prices down?

Yeah, in bad times, Ibrahim says, being the swing producer really is worse.

Because when prices are down, you got to pump less and you make less.

So you're basically dealing with the boom and bust cycle all on your own.

And then there was a bigger problem that Ibrahim says Saudi Arabia started to notice.

As soon as the quotas were imposed, it became very tempting to skirt them.

All those countries sitting there with that sweet, sweet or sour, sour crude ready to pump.

Selling it at that high price really looks tempting.

What if we just pumped a little bit more than our quota?

So they were cheating on their quotas?

Was that a big problem?

OPEC didn't have a solid way to police countries on their quotas.

And so countries would cheat, often.

They're being essentially free riders.

Do Saudis look down on the cheaters and say, ugh?

And all that cheating, it eventually ticked off Saudi Arabia so much that they decided in 1985 to show everyone who was boss and just flood the market with oil.

And that crashed the price of oil everywhere.

It got so low that in the spring of 1986, some gas stations were slinging gallons for pennies.