At $70 WTI and some change, no shale oil well in America makes money. Not enough money to pay full-cycle corporate costs, interest on debt, dividends, future plugging liability and keep drilling $11 MM wells and pay back all the money they borrowed. Anybody that says differently is lying.

Drill baby, drill will henceforth require borrow baby, borrow. $650 B and counting. *

The U.S. shale sector has been masterful in its endeavor to raise CAPEX the past 15 years. It has created new oilfield terms, changed old definitions, thrown out traditional accounting practices, used the E in BOE like geniuses, exaggerated reserves and walked the check on $400 B so far. It created the stupid term, "breakeven" for a specific reason.

Then to make it more complicated, and get more of your money, they discount that breakeven on a NPV basis, leave out half of the real costs, ignore long term debt, pretend land costs (even in M&A's) don't count and otherwise have snookered you, big time.

For what?

So close to 17 billion barrels of American oil could be exported to foreign countries, below costs. (*)

Now almost everyone in America, including this Presidential administration, is convinced that any oil price over $45-$55 breakeven, is all profit.

Essentially the sector helped hire this President who now is intent on driving them into the dirt...and the rest of the domestic oil industry in America along with it.