> Most new US production is higher cost (fracking), so the drop in market share is at least met with a stronger price floor for all. Not to be rude, but this i

> Most new US production is higher cost (fracking), so the drop in market share is at least met with a stronger price floor for all. Not to be rude, but this is really off the mark. The only reason that we're not still in a cartel market regime of $100 barrels is fracking being invented/discovered and efficiently improved. It cut the price floor well in half. Fracking is not the cheapest, but it's also not the most expensive (see Canada's oil sands). When you compare fracked WTI (basically the USA-sourced index) to offshore Brent (North Sea, off the coast of UK), the costs are apples to oranges because fracking can be readily tapped at a relative drop of the hat (if prices spike in a short term period), but offshore is a huge multi-million/billion endeavor where you have to depreciate costs over a really long time horizon (same with oil sands, but different tech).