Thats a good point.
My family has an oil field that was idled because the price for oil was too low.
The deal was that in order to reactivate the oil field they needed the price to be above 25 dollars a barrel for at least 6 months before they would consider turning it on.
The oil from this field costs them 15 dollars a barrel. When they deactivated this field it was because the cost of oil plunged and they had no choice but stop pumping.
I think we will see a resurgence of domestic oil production from idle fields in the US if this keeps up.
A couple of months ago the Pittsburgh Post Gazette had an article about the refurbishing of oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. The price of oil had risen enough to put these wells back on line. I can't remember exactly but there are about 2000 wells that produce 50 barrels a month. They are also drilling new exploratory gas wells also.