OPEC Takes Aim at U.S. Shale Production

Businessweek:

The Saudis are perfectly willing to watch the price of oil keep falling to see if they can’t drive some of those U.S. companies out of business. So the game becomes how low can they go. Recent analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance finds that 19 regions across Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, and Arkansas stop being profitable at $75 a barrel. Which is roughly where things are at the moment.
But those regions account for only about 400,000 barrels of daily production. The real test will be if prices dip below $70. That could start eating into the profits of Bakken production and the hottest parts of Texas in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shale regions, which account for more than half of all U.S. production.

Very interesting.