Saudi Arabia wins a temporary victory over American fracking com[panies

Zero Hedge brings us

news that North Dakota's largest producer, Whiting Petroleum, would suspend all fracking, and that Continental Resources has effectively done the same after reporting that it no longer has any fracking crews working in the Bakken shale.

...The Denver-based company said it would stop fracking and completing wells as of April 1. Most of its $500 million budget will be spent to mothball drilling and fracking operations in the first half of the year. After June, Whiting said it plans to spend only $160 million, mostly on maintenance.

Rival producers Hess Corp and Continental Resources Inc have also slashed their budgets for the year, though neither has cut as much as Whiting.

...One thing is certain: the cuts will drag down production and likely reverberate in the economy of North Dakota, the second-largest U.S. oil producing state after Texas, which currently pumps 1.1 million barrels per day. It means that after the 250,000 oil workers already laid off (according to Credit Suisse estimates), tens of thousands of new pink slips to highly paid workers are about to be handed out.

Read more here.