The biggest problem with EIA projections in my opinion is they always assume the end consumers can afford whatever price is necessary to keep supply growth going forward. In reality those 'less productive zones' are more and more expensive to produce going into the future. Like everything else determined by real world economics, supply is in balance with demand based on price. As ROCKMAN has pointed out dozens of times in the last two years every barrel of oil produced during the 'glut' of the recent months has found a buyer. A small number of those barrels were sold for numbers in the $35/bbl range but a great many more were sold at $50-$60/bbl.
I have pointed people to the numbers several times so here I go again. Prices stayed at or above $60/bbl for the first six months of the 'glut'. Then they declined in fits and starts through the rest of 2015 before bottoming out in January 2016 when the Iran sanctions were lifted and it made a huge media splash. Between the bottom around the second week of January 2016 and six weeks later at the start of March 2016 prices bounced back up into the $40+/bbl range and they cycled between $40-$55 from March through December. With the OPEC+ announcement in November they stabilized above $50/bbl for WTI contracts and they have been sitting in the low fifties the last 11 weeks. From $80/bbl in October 2014 to $ 37/bbl in January 2016 and right back to $56/bbl last month there has not been a single day when the barrels offered for sale by the producers have been left sitting as 'too expensive' by the refiners who ultimately buy and process them.
Those are the real world facts. Models and theories and a thousand pages of justifications are fine entertainment, but the facts remain the facts observable by anyone willing to actually look at them.