70 - Good post but I will to address by perennial bitch. "...the peak of conventional oil". There is no such thing as "conventional oil". There are conventional and unconventional RESERVOIRS. One can take an oil sample, have it analyzed in as much detail as you like and you still couldn't tell if if came from a well completed in a conventional or unconventional reservoir.
Also producing a lot of oil wells in unconventional reservoirs is not new. Some of the largest oil fields discovered in Texas more then half a century ago were unconventional fractured reservoirs found in the Permian Basin in the Spraberry trend discovered in the 1950's. Like most fractured unconventional reservoirs vertical wells tend to not be very impressive. But the reserve potential can be huge:
"In 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy ranked The Spraberry Trend third in the United States by total proved reserves, and seventh in total production. Estimated reserves for the entire Spraberry-Dean unit exceed 10 billion barrels, and by the end of 1994 the field had reported a total production of 924 million barrels."
Almost 1 BILLION BBLS OF OIL before it was drilled horizontally.
More recently, the Austin Chalk carbonate shale was THE hottest oil play in the 90's after we started drilling it horizontally almost 30 years ago. And that wasn't the first AC boom: it took off big time in the late 70's when we only drilled it vertically. One of the reasons the rig count grew to over 4,500...twice that of the recent "shale boom". The Rockman started in 1975 and this was his first overhyped play. LOL.
Some of you newbies think you just stumbled into something unknown. In fact, you are late to the game. Way f*cking late. LOL. For us old farts this is just the same ole same ole.