This article from Planetizen puts the break-even price for hydraulic fracturing at something like $80-85 a barrel, higher than I had previously reported. The point is that they are getting down to the point where it would no longer be as profitable as it has been, and at some point it wouldn’t be profitable at all. It’s fun to try to piece together the reasons for this shift – slowing economies in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and as a result a rising U.S. dollar which means oil that might be holding steady in currencies around the world is still getting cheaper in U.S. dollars at the moment. I still think this is a short-term fluctuation masking a decades-long trend toward higher energy and food prices.