There is a cloud, of course, and it will be for American shale.
A bit of lecture. Shale wells “drill horizontally and die vertically” — meaning, you drill down a couple of miles and then turn sideways to horizontal to expose maximum perforated pipe to rock that has oil in it. But the nature of shale oil is that on day 1 a well produces about 900 barrels/day, and on day 365 it is down to 450 and so forth for subsequent years. The graph of decline is very steep. It drilled horizontally and it dies vertically.
This means to keep the entire field’s output constant or growing, you have to drill frantically. Add new wells faster than that vertical decline for each well can add up to cumulative decline overwhelming the new wells’ output.
The inclination to spend that enormous amount of money (from loans) to drill enough new wells to overcome the legacy declines disappears if the price per barrel declines.
And this means Trump’s goal of spectacular rises in US oil production can’t happen. A lot depends on that. If it doesn’t happen, it’s not a good thing.
We are breaking weekly production every week and will continue to. This is very good news for the Deplorables.
I know nothing about shale drilling other than that it exists. Is it possible to take an existing well that has declined in production and dig down a few more thousand feet and extract from a new layer of shale? Is there only one layer of shale?