My comments from 37 years in industry FWIW.
I think it's possible that prices could stay low for a while longer, because FINDING the fields to produce an over supply of oil and gas, is not and will not be the constraint for a long, long time. The technology to find and produce is too good. Also, supplying the capital to FUND projects, will not be a constraint that limits oil and gas supplies for a long, long time. It's an essential for daily life and national security.
Of course there are limitless possible extraordinary global events which could change the whole equation any given day. But barring these extraordinary events there are two things I mentioned over a year ago that these sort of articles fail to note. 1 - Demand growth in a very low oil & gas price world is likely to surprise to the upside as did 2015. My guess is 2016 will exceed 2015 growth. That's not too difficult to realize. 2 - What people are completely missing is a collapse in the supply of people with the skills and experience to do this type of work. Of that there are strong factors that could make this more severe than ever. The huge baby boom generation which provided this supply has been exiting gradually, but now at a much accelerated pace. I'm a recent data point. In 3 years much of the rest will be out. It will get really interesting then. I suspect this this downturn will depress the global supply of engineers in almost all fields, note just PETE. But it will decimate the supply of geologists and geophysicists.
Short of a major global economic downturn, oil will be rise well beyond $100. In the 1980's the baby boomers were maturing and trying to remain employed in the industry. A large demographic age gap followed his group due to several years of not hiring due to low prices. I witnessed a super major hiring a PETE graduate with only 6 months work experience at Schlumberger, and only averarge grades, sight unseen after one telephone interview. This was 3 years ago. Something much more extreme is in the making. A people bidding war is down the road.
Timing of this? Again barring no extraordinary events, the two short term factors which will make this clearer are the ramp up of Iran and hints of further steepening of the demand curve. Each day of sustained lower prices is working to further inflate the size of the "people undersupply bubble. " Rig count and bankruptcies are lagging indicators. The rate of bubble growth is still in the flat region but will ratchet upward with each college semester and with each baby boomer walking out the door. A SWAG guess is 95% probability of $100+ oil within 3 years from today. Just my opinions.
Happy Mardi Gras,
Kaliboo