I really fail to accept the GCC attack argument.

as is your prerogative. it suits a lot of players at the moment to suppress the oil price for the short to mid term. its unsustainably low given the budgets of most opec nations and will rise again soon enough.
eg Saudi can get it out cheap enough but their annual budget aint cheap, all that electricity and water and princeling wastage has to be paid for somehow.

Saudi is running deficit budgets now. It never did in the past.

But the point is... if you push (say) US oil production down, they will simply come back online when the economics rework. As a strategy it doesn't work.

I really do think it's a demand issue, more than a supply issue.

apart from 2010, through most of the 80s, early 90s, briefly in 2008.

Yes, you are right. never.

I am always right - though sometimes there may be a slip of the pen....... I mean cursor.

to a degree but demand has hardly dropped 60%

This is the common misunderstanding - price is set at the margin. It only takes couple % of change in supply or demand imbalance for massive swings in price.

granted but the price drop is more than that no?

I reckon that there is an 'attack' which is aimed at stopping future exploration etc. Looking at the North Sea there is already talk of closing down existing fields early because of the economic cost of operating aging fields. They have effectively ceased deep water exploration as too expensive. Fracking, shale oil and all those things are expensive to set up and run. When we reach a stage where all of these highly expensive operations have been mothballed, and will take years to start up again, then the oil price will rise to levels where they once again become economically viable. But they will take a long time to get back off the shelf, dust down and put in operation again. The money will be pouring into OPEC once more.

pretty sure it's exactly the opposite?

The new economics of oil: Sheikhs v shale | The Economist

"By contrast, a shale-oil well can be drilled in as little as a week, at a cost of $1.5m. The shale firms know where the shale deposits are and it is pretty easy to hire new rigs; the only question is how many wells to drill. The whole business becomes a bit more like manufacturing drinks: whenever the world is thirsty, you crank up the bottling plant."

I am no O&G expert (in fact not an expert on anything) just going on other comments plus the latest revelations that fracking has and does cause earthquakes.

A friend who covers energy at the WSJ said exactly that to me late last year.