IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-17-15.html

Is the US the New Swing Producer? The Price-Responsiveness of Tight Oil

Author

Listed:
  • Newell, Richard G.

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Prest, Brian C.

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

We analyze the price responsiveness of onshore oil supply from conventional versus new unconventional “tight” formations in the United States. We separately analyze three key stages of oil production: drilling wells, completing wells, and production from completed wells. We find that the important margin is drilling investment. We estimate drilling responses of approximately 1.3 percent for tight oil and 1.1 percent for conventional oil per 1 percent change in oil prices. In addition, tight oil wells produce about 4.6 times more oil compared to conventional ones. Together, the long-run price responsiveness of supply is about 5 times larger for tight oil on a per well basis, and about 9 times larger when accounting for the rise in the number of unconventional wells drilled. Based on these estimates, simulations of the time-profile of oil production response to price changes show that the US supply response is much larger now due to the shale revolution. Nonetheless, it takes many months before a substantial portion of the full supply response is online, longer than the 30 to 90 days typically associated with the role of “swing producer” such as Saudi Arabia.

Suggested Citation

  • Newell, Richard G. & Prest, Brian C., 2017. "Is the US the New Swing Producer? The Price-Responsiveness of Tight Oil," RFF Working Paper Series 17-15, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-17-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rff.org/documents/1772/RFF-WP-17-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kilian, Lutz & Baumeister, Christiane, 2014. "A General Approach to Recovering Market Expectations from Futures Prices With an Application to Crude Oil," CEPR Discussion Papers 10162, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    2. Carol Dahl & Mine K. Yücel, 1991. "What motivates oil producers?: testing alternative hypotheses," Working Papers 9106, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    3. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2016. "Forty Years of Oil Price Fluctuations: Why the Price of Oil May Still Surprise Us," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 139-160, Winter.
    4. Ramcharran, Harri, 2002. "Oil production responses to price changes: an empirical application of the competitive model to OPEC and non-OPEC countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 97-106, March.
    5. Lutz Kilian, 2009. "Not All Oil Price Shocks Are Alike: Disentangling Demand and Supply Shocks in the Crude Oil Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1053-1069, June.
    6. repec:aen:journl:1991v12-04-a08 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Griffin, James M, 1985. "OPEC Behavior: A Test of Alternative Hypotheses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(5), pages 954-963, December.
    8. Robert B. Barsky & Lutz Kilian, 2002. "Do We Really Know That Oil Caused the Great Stagflation? A Monetary Alternative," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2001, Volume 16, pages 137-198, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Richard G. Newell & Brian C. Prest & Ashley Vissing, 2016. "Trophy Hunting vs. Manufacturing Energy: The Price-Responsiveness of Shale Gas," NBER Working Papers 22532, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. repec:aen:journl:1990v11-03-a06 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Lucas W. Davis & Lutz Kilian, 2011. "Estimating the effect of a gasoline tax on carbon emissions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(7), pages 1187-1214, November.
    12. John Coglianese & Lucas W. Davis & Lutz Kilian & James H. Stock, 2017. "Anticipation, Tax Avoidance, and the Price Elasticity of Gasoline Demand," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 1-15, January.
    13. Paul L. Joskow, 2013. "Natural Gas: From Shortages to Abundance in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 338-343, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard G. Newell & Brian C. Prest, 2019. "The Unconventional Oil Supply Boom: Aggregate Price Response from Microdata," The Energy Journal, , vol. 40(3), pages 1-30, May.
    2. Güntner, Jochen H.F., 2014. "How do oil producers respond to oil demand shocks?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-13.
    3. Efthymios G. Pavlidis & Ivan Paya & David A. Peel, 2018. "Using Market Expectations to Test for Speculative Bubbles in the Crude Oil Market," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(5), pages 833-856, August.
    4. Hilde C. Bjørnland & Frode Martin Nordvik & Maximilian Rohrer, 2021. "Supply flexibility in the shale patch: Evidence from North Dakota," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(3), pages 273-292, April.
    5. Richard G. Newell & Brian C. Prest & Ashley Vissing, 2016. "Trophy Hunting vs. Manufacturing Energy: The Price-Responsiveness of Shale Gas," NBER Working Papers 22532, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Benk, Szilard & Gillman, Max, 2020. "Granger predictability of oil prices after the Great Recession," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    7. Stock, J.H. & Watson, M.W., 2016. "Dynamic Factor Models, Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressions, and Structural Vector Autoregressions in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 415-525, Elsevier.
    8. Herwartz, Helmut & Rohloff, Hannes & Wang, Shu, 2022. "Proxy SVAR identification of monetary policy shocks - Monte Carlo evidence and insights for the US," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    9. Valenti, Daniele & Manera, Matteo & Sbuelz, Alessandro, 2020. "Interpreting the oil risk premium: Do oil price shocks matter?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    10. Lin, Boqiang & Omoju, Oluwasola E. & Okonkwo, Jennifer U., 2015. "Will disruptions in OPEC oil supply have permanent impact on the global oil market?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 1312-1321.
    11. Pier Basaglia & Sophie M. Behr & Moritz A. Drupp, 2023. "De-Fueling Externalities: How Tax Salience and Fuel Substitution Mediate Climate and Health Benefits," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2041, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    12. Lutz Kilian & Xiaoqing Zhou, 2018. "Structural Interpretation of Vector Autoregressions with Incomplete Identification: Revisiting the Role of Oil Supply and Demand Shocks: Comment," CESifo Working Paper Series 7166, CESifo.
    13. Honorata Nyga-Łukaszewska & Kentaka Aruga, 2020. "Energy Prices and COVID-Immunity: The Case of Crude Oil and Natural Gas Prices in the US and Japan," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-17, November.
    14. Conlon, Thomas & Cotter, John & Eyiah-Donkor, Emmanuel, 2022. "The illusion of oil return predictability: The choice of data matters!," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    15. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2016. "Understanding the Decline in the Price of Oil since June 2014," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 131-158.
    16. Hao, Xianfeng & Zhao, Yuyang & Wang, Yudong, 2020. "Forecasting the real prices of crude oil using robust regression models with regularization constraints," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    17. Knut Are Aastveit & Hilde C. Bjørnland & Thomas S. Gundersen, 2026. "The price responsiveness of shale producers: Evidence from micro data," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(2), pages 394-430, May.
    18. Pier Basaglia & Sophie M. Behr & Moritz A. Drupp & Piero Basaglia, 2023. "De-Fueling Externalities: Causal Effects of Fuel Taxation and Mediating Mechanisms for Reducing Climate and Pollution Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 10508, CESifo.
    19. Gideon Bornstein & Per Krusell & Sergio Rebelo, 2017. "A World Equilibrium Model of the Oil Market," NBER Working Papers 23423, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Herwartz, Helmut & Rohloff, Hannes & Wang, Shu, 2020. "Proxy SVAR identification of monetary policy shocks: MonteCarlo evidence and insights for the US," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 404, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-17-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.