richrobinson -

Matt Ridley has an excellent article on this topic. Here is a targeted quote from that article to answer your question on fracking profits:

(quote)

The falling oil price is largely the Americans’ fault. By reinventing the extraction process for first gas, then oil, with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, engineers have almost doubled the country’s output of oil in six years. That ingenuity was made possible by the high price of oil, which promised fabulous riches to those who could get oil out of shale, but it is no longer dependent on the high price of oil. It is often said that the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices and so it has proved.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that most shale oil production remains profitable at $80 a barrel. One North Dakota oilman tells me that his rate of return on fracked wells drops to 10 per cent only when oil prices reach $55, and that’s without taking into account the falling price of fuel for his vehicles. Every month American oil production rises by 100,000 barrels a day at the moment and that is not going to change for a year or so whatever happens to the price of oil. The number of rigs drilling for oil will start to drop off if the oil price falls further, but only slowly. Of course, unlike the nationalised decisions of Opec, oil production in America is the sum of the investment decisions of hundreds of independent companies.

(endquote)

The entire article may be found at:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/che...

Jan

It would only stop it temporarily unless followed up with regulatory or legislative bars. Without some other action it would start right back up when the price went up again.

Much like various precious metal mines open and close based on bullion prices.

They'd much rather attack it using the EPA and permitting process, because they can directly control it. And if you look at the evidence (number of permits issued by the Department of Energy for Public lands), you'd see that they've been pursuing this policy since Obama took office. The boom is all coming on PRIVATE lands where the DoE and EPA have only very minimal reach and therefore don't have the power to obstruct things like on public lands.

World oil prices going in same direction as *all* other commodities - Down.
Has zero to do with the US election cycle.

Depends on how the midterms shake out.

If the senate remains as it is, a small but real chance the administration can curtail US production somewhat.

If the Republicans control the senate and house both, that curtailment chance gets slimmer, and the possibility of increasing production further/faster becomes more real.

For example, higher odds of getting some pipelines built to ease the strain on road and rail for transport.

Having worked for a transportation company, it isn't the cost consumers pay at the pump that is the bigger-picture issue. It's the bulk price that the trucking companies pay that matters, because it affects EVERYTHING at the store! Everything you buy is shipped by truck - most of it 100% of the way from supplier to consumer, some only 20% as much (for rail). We pay for that shipping in the prices we pay - especially for groceries.

It's not just the cost filling up one's gas tank. It's also the cost of delivering all of the products, running the factories and the basic ingredient of all plastics, which are, today, the basic ingredients of life.

50 cents a gallon is $100 billion a year that is freed up for other uses in the US alone. It means small businesses have more customers and will add employees. That multiplies the effect. It is a big deal for the economy. Before gasoline got to $1500 per month there would be food riots and a violent coup.

(Of course the cost of gasoline pales in comparison to the amounts being wasted by all those paying interest to banksters who created the loans from nothing.)

Yes, CircuitGuy, but when gas prices are up I tend to stay home. This means that I do not go out and spend money going to dinner with my friends.

Jan