Shale in the West can be part of a shorter cycle from drilling to production than offshore but it is not and cannot be a swing producer .
To be a swing producer , a producer must be able to do two things ; i) dial up more production within days to maintain reliable supply in the event of an outage elsewhere caused by a geopolitical/natural event ii) reduce production significantly within days to defend price .
Shalers cannot do the first because they need the production to service debt so have to deplete the wells flat out .
Even Western conventional production cannot fulfil the second requirement because there is no mechanism to co-ordinate hundreds of industry participants to reduce production at the same time .
The US shaler's were there own worst enemy by mindless over-production destroying the price they were getting . They have drilled out their very best acreage at the bottom of the market just to survive .
Only very large , typically state controlled majors , which are not producing to service debt can reduce production across the board .
With storage so full , particularly of liquids and particularly of light-tight-oil in the US which has nowhere to go because the refineries cannot take it without blending it with heavy , swing production to maintain supply is not so important .
(20min delay)