Where Would Oil Prices Be Without Shale Boom?

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From The Hill's Congress Blog:
If there’s any good news in this, it’s that prices would have been much, much higher if shale-extracted U.S. oil hadn’t been in the global supply mix. By mid-2013, total American oil production hit its highest level since 1989. During last year alone, U.S. oil producers added an extra million barrels/day, the largest one-year increase in American history.  
It’s an astonishing turnaround. Just seven years ago, domestic oil production had been seen for decades in seemingly terminal decline. To measure the sea change, consider that the state of Texas is now producing more oil than Iran.   
Some see the shale revolution as over-ballyhooed, a one-shot wonder which only temporarily high oil prices have enabled. There’s a consensus that investment in shale production needs an oil price floor of around $80/barrel. Yet this overlooks the constant, cost-cutting impact of new efficiencies and technical tweaks to the process of hydraulic fracturing, some of it driven by environmental concerns.
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