BREAK EVEN PRICE OF FRACKING OIL

With the price of oil falling, I have been wondering what the breakeven price of oil shale oil might be.  Not surprisingly it varies by sedimentary basin and kind of oil, depth and other factors.*  Note Eagle Ford is in the North Dakota - Montana oil shale group as is, of course, the Bakken field.  The information is over a year old, but I presume it is not too out of date.  Apparently, only the Delaware Basin shale oil is at the hazard of sub-$80/ bbl oil.

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"3) Each basin, operator, and individual well has a different economic value assigned to fracking. As oil prices drop, a few low-value projects will immediately become uneconomical. As prices drop further, more projects stop being worthwhile. There is a lot of diversity in the oil & gas business, so oil production has a very smooth supply curve — each dollar of price reduction will reduce long-term supply by a small amount. Colorado kerogen shale might be economical at $120-200/bbl. Oil shales seem to phase out around the $65-90/bbl range, oil sands cost about $45-80/bbl, deepwater stops being worth it around $35-60/bbl, and Saudi Arabia‘s Ghawar field will keep pumping until oil hits $15/bbl. That’s a vast oversimplification but perhaps it’s what the question asker is looking for."*

I have expressed elsewhere my concern about our exporting oil (except in strategic cases): http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/01/frac-oil-and-gas.html.  A recent article in the Economist comes to the conclusion that we should restrict oil imports, a conclusion with which I agree:.**

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* http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/01/08/what-would-happen-to-the-current-fracking-activity-and-subsequent-booms-generated-if-oil-bbl-were-to-drop/
** http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/10/01/economist-to-protect-frackers-u-s-should-restrict-oil-imports/