Getty ImagesOPEC—and Saudi Arabia—aren’t likely to give up the fight for market share.Saudi Arabia is feeling some significant fiscal pain as a result of a collapse in oil prices it helped to engineer. But that doesn’t mean the world’s most important oil producer is likely to change its tune. Here’s a recent pair of headlines out of the desert kingdom: An International Monetary Fund official told The Wall Street Journal that Saudi Arabia and fellow Middle Eastern oil exporters face a combined $1 trillion budget shortfall over the next five years if crude oil prices remain near present levels and economic reforms aren’t introduced soon.Bloomberg earlier this week reported that Saudi Arabia delayed payments to government contractors as slumping oil prices pushed the country into deficit for the first time since 2009. IMF Those developments have oil bulls salivating. They argue that Saudi Arabia and its fellow members of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries overestimated the resiliency of U.S. shale producers when they embarked on a price war aimed at taking market share back from the U.S. and other non-OPEC producers. The fundamentals surrounding oil “may be changing as the Saudis can’t afford this price war and [capex] cuts in energy keep coming,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group, in a note. “Well over $200 billion of energy projects have been canceled leading to a historic point in energy. The cuts in cap that we see today will lead to tighter supplies and higher prices in the future.” Belfer Center But will fiscal strains lead Saudi Arabia to cry uncle, or to pump even more oil? The fiscal “break-even” price—the oil price at which the country can balance its budget—sits well above current levels for Saudi Arabia and many of its fellow Gulf producers. The Belfer Center at Harvard University puts Saudi Arabia’s 2015 break-even price at between $95 and $106 a barrel (see table above). That’s based on the assumption that Saudi Arabia pumps an average of 9.7 million barrels a day in 2015. If the country pumps more, the break-even price falls. Indeed, with the cost of getting oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia seen in the low $20s or less, there is incentive to keep pumping. And besides, the objective of the enterprise was to grab market share away from North American shale and other non-OPEC producers. The question, however, is whether the drop in oil prices, which remain more than 50% below mid-2014 levels, has overtaken the ability of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members to pump their way out of the fiscal hole. Oil futures CLZ5, +0.33% closed at a three-week low Wednesday on a rise in U.S. oil supplies, as investors ignored a meeting of OPEC and other top oil producers in Vienna. See: Talk of reviving this OPEC oil price plan is blast from the past. While the country is facing a fiscal squeeze, most analysts believe the country can continue to weather some rough sailing. So far, there’s little sign the Saudis, who dominate OPEC, are ready to throw in the towel. And it does look like U.S. shale producers are finally beginning to tighten the spigots. On the other hand, questions about global demand could continue to limit the market’s ability to clear a glut even as non-OPEC production ebbs. Don’t expect the Saudis to reverse course soon, but also remember that Riyadh likes to keep its cards close to its vest, said Gene McGillian, senior analyst at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Conn. “We get another year down the road and these problems are exacerbated considerably it stands to reason they will look at these things again,” he said. More from MarketWatch