If the oil industry can't meet demand, won't prices rise, and thus, couldn't shale become viable, despite its higher production costs?
The deal is this: production cost will be lower for pumping oil out of the ground. The process won’t beat that, ever.
There is probably not a single twenty year period in the history of the oil industry where this would have been true.
Indeed, it is just a vapid worry, as long as a free market is allowed to function. Even today, when you can have all the gasoline you want to buy at $3.00/gal, the industry could not meet the demand if government forced the price down to $1.00/gallon.