It will cost more to bring "process oil" to market than pumped oil. On that we agree (or at least I'm conceding, for the sake of argument - truth is I don't really know, because what if once the infrastructure's in place, the overhead goes down...?). But I think what I'm missing is why that's relevant? or perhaps, what question that's relevant to?
If somebody wants to pay a dollar a gallon more just to have process oil they probably also stop at Starbucks every day.
Huh? Of course no one would "pay more for" the resulting oil from shale. Why would they? But again: how's that relevant?
To use simple numbers, say that pumped oil costs 1/gallon to bring to market and shale oil costs 9/gallon to bring to market. If the market price of oil is 8/gallon, then no one would bother with shale oil. But if the market price of oil rises to 10/gallon, then there is a profit to be made from shale oil.
So whether shale oil "beats" pumped oil matters not a whit, that I can see.
In Hitler’s Germany they used process oil because there wasn’t enough pumped oil. With that they were forced to rationing and they still ran out. Even if price were no object process oil will never produce to meet cheap oil.