Now that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has hatched a tentative plan to curb production, the debate about who won the oil price war can resume.

Was it the Saudis and OPEC, who’ve knocked down U.S. crude output by 1.1 million barrels a day from its peak, or the resilient U.S. shale drillers, who’ve saddled the Saudis with a massive budget deficit and a slumping economy while barely easing off the gas pedal?

This is a trick question, of course. The next time you drive, you’ll see the real winners all around you, zipping around on cheap gas. As of the second quarter of 2016, American consumers were on track to spend $137 billion less annually on gasoline and other energy products than two years earlier, according to government statistics. A different data set shows the typical U.S. household saving $521 last year just on gas vs. 2013.

As for the overly productive producers, the shale drillers have weathered this ordeal best, albeit at a cost of 18,000 U.S. oil jobs cut in the last year. They’ve squeezed their ongoing expenses hard as well even as drilling productivity has increased, to the point where the best companies are now able to generate free cash flow while maintaining output even at today’s low prices.

This ruthless cost-cutting is a far cry from the still bloated public budgets of the OPEC members, who continue to pay for the military, the police, social programs and the usual corruption schemes out of dwindling oil revenue.

So even as the shale pioneers have begun to put more drilling rigs back to work and make plans for completing all the wells drilled but not yet tapped, the Saudis were forced to finally change course.

Any meaningful cut in OPEC’s output is every bit as likely as before to be offset by increased North American shale production. So it’s not as if managing the oil supply now looks any more plausible than it did two years ago, when the Saudis openly rejected this strategy in favor of letting a glutted market rebalance at a much lower price.

Rather, the increasingly hard-pressed Saudi regime had little choice but to attempt to prop up oil prices now, even at the risk of more pain later. A stalled economy, yawning budget deficit and melting foreign currency reserves appear to have exhausted the kingdom’s faith in a free-market solution. Hence the announcement at this week’s OPEC meeting in Algiers that the group would curb its output from the recent 33.24 million barrels per day to a new range of 32.5-33 million bpd.

At most, the cut would still amount to less than 1% of current global demand (but roughly half of this year’s expected demand growth.) That’s assuming OPEC can agree on country quotas as part of a fleshed out accord in November.

To get even this far, the Saudis had to concede that archrival Iran will not need to reduce its recently revived crude output. Iraq, an ally of Iran and an even bigger contributor to the current glut, will most assuredly cheat on whatever quota it’s given, like most OPEC members have most of the time. Much of the cost of a credible cut will have to be shouldered, as it always has been, by the Saudis.

But that bill won’t be coming due for a while longer and in the meantime oil prices are up, even if just by a couple of bucks a barrel in a reflection of widespread skepticism.

Make no mistake: this OPEC U-turn reflects growing Saudi hardship and oil’s bearish near-term fundamentals, which will only get worse if higher prices spur additional production.

Oil prices may not rise much further than they have already, but if this deal doesn’t completely fall apart it should at least prop up crude near its current levels during the next couple of months, notwithstanding the traditional fall discounting amid lower seasonal demand. Talk is cheap, so there will be lots of talk about cuts, both as a means of squeezing speculators who are short and to build support among producers by showcasing the cut’s potential benefits.

At the margin, such talk will channel more investment dollars to shale developers, who continue to attract cheap capital with promises of a quick payoff. Barring a major supply crisis, oil price rallies should prove short-lived as these producers build their hedge books. The additional hedges, in turn, will incentivize higher production.

Unless steady demand growth takes off, the Saudis will eventually have to choose between surrendering even more market share or exposing the OPEC cut as an ineffectual desperation move. When that happens, being overly long shale drillers may not seem like such a great idea once again.

We continue to favor the midstream providers who are facilitating the domestic output growth without risking much direct exposure to energy prices.

Notably, Enbridge Energy Partners (NYSE: EEP) and its distribution reinvestment proxy Enbridge Energy Management (NYSE: EEQ) will benefit from Canadian oil sands production set to grow regardless of the short-term fluctuations in oil prices. Both securities are off to a strong start since we added them to the Conservative Portfolio last month.

Growing U.S. crude volumes would be a boon for Sunoco Logistics (NYSE: SXL), the crude logistics MLP that earlier this week unveiled a midstream assets acquisition in the red-hot Permian Basin. Following a secondary offering to cover some of the deal’s cost, SXL continues to offer an annualized yield above 7% on a distribution increased 14% over the past year. And of course its expansion will ultimately benefit Energy Transfer Equity (NYSE: ETE), SXL’s indirect general partner.

Buy Conservative pick SXL below $33 and top Best Buy ETE, a Growth recommendation, beneath $22. EEQ and EEP have buy limits of $29 and $30, respectively.