In any case, when oil costs dropped pointedly in 2014, the legislature was all of a sudden looked with a vast gap in its funds and needed to decrease a portion of its most well known projects.

No, even with the "low" prices that started in September of 2014 if I remember correctly, there should still be enough money in savings to cover for times with these "low" prices. There were a lot of years with oil at 100$ and even higher. And the national budget was also based on the theoretical price of 60$, leaving an extra 40$ from those years with +100$ as the price.