When the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) meets Friday in Vienna, the cartel will be celebrating a victory of sorts, one that has cost its members dearly.

A year ago Opec, whose members include Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, was facing increasing competition from North America. Alarmed by the growing supply of oil from non-traditional producers using fracking to access oil in shale deposits like the Bakken field in North Dakota, Opec was determined to stop this competition. Instead of trying to support prices, it decided to maintain market share.

The theory was a sharp price drop would kill these expensive-to-operate shale-oil producers and Opec would regain its crown as supplier of choice. The strategy certainly helped bring down prices. By 31 December 2014, prices for both Brent and the West Texas Intermediate crude oil slid about 50% from their 2014 high. In 2015, prices continued falling. Now they hover just off 2009 lows, around $44 a barrel for Brent and $41 for WTI.

The problem for Opec, and oil producers in general, is prices remained weak for much longer than expected. Only recently has US shale-oil production slowed, which is why most oil-market watchers expect Opec to maintain its focus and continue with its expensive plan to undermine the competition.

“Is Saudi Arabia now going take a U-turn just as it is about to see its strategy work? Given the fact their motives behind it was to get rid of the high-cost producers out there … [it is] unlikely they will take a U-turn at this time,” said Abhishek Deshpande, chief oil market analyst at Natixis.

In other words, if Saudi Arabia wants to play the long game and smother the competition, it has to take more short-term pain.

There’s been a 60% fall in the number of oil rigs, but firms are still operating the most productive wells. That’s why output is down only 500,000 barrels a day from the April peak, averaging 9.1m daily in October, said the Energy Information Agency, part of the US Energy Department. However, that’s still above the 8.7m pumped daily in 2014 and they estimate 2016 fourth-quarter average production around 8.8m daily.

The slow reduction in US oil production was a surprise to many, said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at US Bank Wealth Management, one reason why prices are still down.

Opec’s decision reverberated worldwide. News reports cite about 250,000 layoffs globally, and the EIA said international and US oil producers wrote down $38bn in assets in the third quarter of 2015, the largest for any quarter since at least 2008 for the 46 companies they track. In a research note, UBS analysts said capital expenditures in the US energy exploration and production sector fell about 40% year-over-year in 2015 and are expected to fall another 28% year-over-year in 2016.

Opec members also felt the sting, as many of them use their oil money to support social programs, Deshpande said. Saudi Arabia’s cost of production is probably as low as $10 a barrel, but he said they need prices closer to $100 a barrel to fund their budget. In July, the Saudis issued domestic bonds for the first time since 2007 to help plug a budget deficit that’s around $100bn, he said. Economically weaker Opec members like Venezuela and Nigeria are in worse straits.

US production is slowing, but Opec members are contributing to a global supply glut. Their stated production target is 30m barrels daily, but the International Energy Agency said they pumped 31.76m barrels in October. That extra output accounts for much of the 1.5m barrels of oil that exceeds demand.

That target may be raised slightly to accommodate the return of Indonesia, which produces about 900,000 barrels a day, but considering Opec has consistently overproduced, the target is relatively meaningless.

The global glut may worsen in the next few months, said Bart Melek, head of commodity strategy at TD Securities. Demand slows in the winter and next year, once sanctions on Iran are lifted, they’ll start exporting more oil, he said. Consensus estimates suggest Iran could pump as much as 500,000 barrels daily. That won’t make Saudi Arabia happy, and gives them even more reason to want to maintain market share, he said.

Persistent low prices into 2016 may make it harder for shale-oil producers to restart because of funding problems, even if prices rebound, Melek said.

“I’m speculating, but I imagine Opec would like to see that industry’s ability to [find] funding erode a bit more,” he said.

For consumers, low oil values keeps gas prices subdued. The EIA said US retail regular-grade gasoline prices averaged $2.09 per gallon as of 23 November, the lowest since 2008. With oil prices expected to stay low, “the good news is that drivers will continue to pay less”, Haworth said. Consumers, for once, are the winners in this global clash of oil powers.