Info mostly comes from banter with energy market traders who are getting ready for a mixture of feast and bloodbath. I used to work a futures desk, mostly on intermediates. I got a decent sense of the market in those few years, and watching it is an ongoing pastime. Re: the specifics around fracking start&#x2F;stop - it&#x27;s staff. You either retain salaried workers who are unproductive for stretches, or you work contractors, which is expensive. Either way it drives up cost.<p>Re the demand driven bit - I explained that poorly. Oil is a very &quot;special&quot; commodity, in that it has <i>spectacular</i> investment costs, incredible levels of state funding (and debt), and a price determined by <i>anticipated</i> demand more than anything else I&#x27;m aware of - you need only look at the volume curve across futures to see this - and the fact that we are <i>still</i> in a contango market. This adds up to the price of oil being driven by overall economic growth forecasts, which are theoretically demand, but aren&#x27;t. This results in expenditure (exploration and exploitation), which has a several year time lag. Fracking has been oh-jesus expensive and may never turn a profit. Investors (states) are getting shy.<p>I&#x27;m still explaining this poorly - I&#x27;d need to write an essay to convey what I&#x27;m trying to get at - there are a few dynamics at play and I will be amazed if we don&#x27;t start seeing even more instability.<p>Confidence in the market is very, very low. Talk to traders, not what the press says. Of course the press says it&#x27;s rosy - nobody wants a premature sell-off, even if there could be some tasty dead cats in it for the vultures. We still need oil for energy for the time being.