As I addressed earlier there are about 1.5 million barrels a day of oversupply. Global demand is growing by about one million barrels a day.
Remember there are declines in oil fields all around the world. The oil sands have a unique profile.
In shale oil, as Andrew rightly pointed out, production can be brought on very quickly and taken off-line. Shale producers have become the swing producers in the world. As demand compensates or grows to take over the excess supply, and then continues its growth, shale oil out of North America is going to be able to meet that demand for a number of years.
I deal internationally with a number of other countries that have their own shale oil resources and are looking at how they can develop and how they can recreate the North American shale miracle.
We're not going to be in danger of any shortages, barring a major supply disruption out of the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela, or some of the more unstable areas. There is going to be lots there, but you're right in that it's going to be more expensive.
But then efficiencies.... Remember Moore's law with transistors? We're experiencing that in the oil and gas sector to some degree. The advances we're making in individual well productivity are increasing rapidly. How fast we can drill wells, put them on production, and how productive those wells can be is a magnitude better than it was as recently as 2005, and it's going to continue to increase. Companies like ours spend half our time figuring out what the next step is and how we can stay ahead of our competition.