Yes, I concur with what you said, and with your conclusion that prices would likely be over $100/barrel now, if not for the surge in US production (the fracking revolution).
The only thing I would point out, is that we are more than one year into this major shift in the oil market. US production has been rising sharply for the last few years (despite the Obama Administration's regulation), driven by the new technologies, that have made it much cheaper and quicker to produce oil by fracking.
Since 2012, the US production has been in a period of explosive growth. OPEC and Russia joined forces in 2016 to try to starve off the Frackers (who are private companies rather than State oil companies that run most of the rest of the world's production), trying to bankrupt them with low prices.
The frackers just improved their technologies and cut their costs, and kept taking more of the market. Now it is clear that the attempt to kill American frackers has failed, and America is shooting to become the world's largest producer, with no end in sight to our growth.
Check out the steep growth curve that fracking produced - and natural gas is growing like this too. Now we are hitting 10 million b/d. Every year is a big change. If this keeps up for a decade, Wow!
I mostly agree. Good graph! I do remember a period when a lot of people were freaking out that “the frackers were getting wiped out” by low prices — I suspect there’s a bit of a blip in that curve, just to the right of 2015 — but I argued that the “tech” would come through, and it did - remarkably so. Now, the fracker’s bet has really paid off.
OTOH, the “tech”, while not applicable everywhere, of course, is applicable to SOME places outside the US, and surely with time more such fields will be found, and the tech applied. So, it behooves us to keep every advantage, and to reduce / eliminate disadvantages, such as Obama-type over-regulation. That last “component” of the “shift” was what I was referring to as only being a year old.
Interestingly, while they are a “smaller” competitor when it comes to fracking, I wonder if the Euro’s can even follow with a moderation of regulations? Only if the Muslims take over there, perhaps, in a few decades?