As with many a real war, it’s a little hard to tell who’s winning the showdown over market share between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. shale producers.

Oil consumers have benefited most. Meanwhile the warring suppliers, whether American or OPEC, have had to sell crude for a fraction of its price just a few months ago and, if not at a loss, certainly for not much of a gain.

Saudi Arabia has had a much more comfortable “war” so far than its competitors. Its dramatic shortfall in oil revenue has been made up with deficit spending backed by the kingdom’s vast petrodollar treasure trove. The new king celebrated his trouble-free accession to the throne by granting public employees who make up the bulk of the country’s workforce an extra two months’ salary. Saudi stocks are up more than 10% year-to-date. They’re letting les bon temps rouller in Riyadh by plastering Benjamin Franklins over any undesirable manifestation of economic reality.

Meanwhile, the going’s been much more rugged in Cowboyistan, as some U.S. drillers refer to their home turf. Instead of extra paychecks, pink slips and demands for price cuts from suppliers have become the order of the day. Most U.S. energy stocks, especially those of the drillers, remain down big from last summer’s highs. Though most high yield energy bonds needn’t be repaid for several more years, their prices have been knocked down by spreading worry that they might not get repaid at all.

This is not even remotely a danger for Cowboyistan’s richest corporate citizen, the investment-grade rated shale driller EOG Resources (NYSE: EOG). Still, the 2015 guidance EOG delivered this week along with disappointing quarterly numbers demonstrated a hard-nosed preoccupation with preserving long-term value, not popularity.

The company will slash spending by 40% this year, though that will still mean it will invest $5 billion in operating cash flow to maintain last year’s production rate and build a backlog of wells to be completed when oil prices recover.

Still, flat production will be a big change for EOG, which has increased its output by as much as 50% annually in recent years. “The company is not interested in accelerating crude oil production in a low-price environment,” it announced.

What it very much remains interested in is continuing to drive down production costs via technological improvements and tough haggling while steadily improving well productivity. EOG claims its core acreage in the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Permian Basin can deliver after-tax 35% annual returns even with crude at $55 a barrel. The wells it will delay bringing online this year with crude near $50 would be tapped next year if prices were to recover to as little as $60.

This is very bad news in the long run for Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members who are hoping to outlast the likes of EOG. First, note that the company, like so many of its rivals, isn’t actually curbing its output but rather merely restraining further growth. So it’s not at all a given that lower prices will in fact reduce global supply. And if U.S. shale production growth were to resume next year with crude at $60 thanks to relentless productivity improvements, the entire Saudi attempt to talk crude down and shale into submission will have been for naught.

U.S. drillers are cutting staff and costs while the Saudis are paying their soldiers, secret policemen and petroleum engineers extra simply to maintain their loyalty. And the Saudis and the frackers alike have more resources to ride out this downturn than Libya, Venezuela and Nigeria, which are looking more and more like failed states. These are ultimately the highest-cost producers who will be squeezed out.

In the meantime, the spread between the Brent crude traded globally and the West Texas Intermediate U.S. benchmark has now widened to nearly $12 per barrel after briefly vanishing altogether last month. It reflects the reality that the domestic glut created by shale will be around for multiple months at least and in fact shows few immediate signs of easing.

In the long run, the persistence and adaptability of EOG and other strong shale drillers should help them against any foreign competitor, including the inefficient state-owned ones in the Middle East. But for the moment, their willingness to maintain if not grow production is even better news for the U.S. refiners and midstream processors who get to buy domestic crude and related commodities at a discount and turn them into value-added fuel exports.

This windfall could grow even larger, because while the consensus view is that crude is now unsustainably cheap, the behavior of the Saudis as well as EOG suggests current prices are quite sustainable, at least while hardly anyone is willing to actually cut output.

Higher oil prices in a year or so are now part of an overwhelmingly consensus view, promoted by producers foreign and domestic who would like nothing more than another chance to hedge future production growth. If they and the traders who’ve stored millions of barrels at sea in hopes of profiting from their eventual sale are proven right, that would certainly be convenient, since it’s widely expected. But markets seldom follow the path of greatest convenience, and even the Saudis can’t simply buy a happy ending.