Past experience suggests the fortunes of the U.S. oil industry, Saudi Arabia and OPEC are bound tightly together.
Part of the adjustment process now underway in the oil market is likely to be a prolonged period of lower prices and a slowdown in the growth of the U.S. shale industry.
North Dakota's Bakken has become a relatively mature play, so this time around it might be spared the worst of the slowdown. Drilling has slowed in some outlying counties, but in counties at the core of play continue to report strong activity. North Dakota's Bakken is far more cost-competitive than it was in the 1990s thanks to technical advances and improvements in drilling efficiency.
The shale revolution will not be reversed, and the United States will continue to have a much bigger role in global supply. But some slowdown in shale growth is inevitable and will probably come on the fringes of the Bakken and in less developed shale oil plays, which have taken its place at the vulnerable high-cost frontier for U.S. onshore oil exploration.
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Casper, Wyo., hits low of -26 degrees, breaking 2 different temperature records -
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