“In general, at what WTI prices do you think that drillers will cut back in the Bakken, the Permian and the Eagle Ford, respectively?”
The key is “will” vs “should”.
Every play has areas that are lucrative vs barely economic, so there will always be drilling in these plays at low oil prices.
At the current price of close to $80/b, all three plays will have reduced rig activity in those barely economic areas. It may have some delay though as one does not turn on a dime in the oilpatch.
Overall, the Permian may be least affected as it is large and a lot of the activity is in “proving up” areas where one does not know how commercial it is until one drills some wells in it. Also, there are some players there who just plunked down a lot of money for land to get into the area, and they must continue to drill in order to preserve their acreage position.
In the Bakken and Eagleford, these are more well known plays, and there is less pressure to continue to drill, so rig laydowns are more inevitable.
Do you agree with these numbers from Bloomberg? I don't know where they got them, or what ROE they represent.