Two entirely different questions share one word, and averaging them — which happens constantly — produces a number about nothing.
A breakeven is the most quoted figure in oil analysis and the least specified. Asked what oil price the market needs, a producer answers about a well and a finance ministry answers about a budget, and the two answers are not different estimates of one quantity. They are answers to different questions, and one of them is not about oil at all.
This ledger separates them, carries the wellhead figures the Institute has from a dated primary survey, and states plainly what it does not have. Two substantial families of number are missing from this page on purpose, and the reasons are printed rather than papered over — because in both cases the figures that circulate do not agree with each other.
Prepared by The Baratelli Institute · publication date September 10, 2026. Every figure below carries its own measurement date, which is set by whoever measured it and is often older than this page.
Read this table before reading any breakeven number anywhere.
| Wellhead breakeven | Fiscal breakeven | |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | At what oil price does drilling this well earn its cost of capital? | At what oil price does this government balance its budget? |
| What it is a property of | A rock, a well design, a service-cost environment and a firm's hurdle rate. | A budget. It moves when spending plans move, with no change in geology, cost or production. |
| Who produces the number | Operators, reported through surveys such as the Dallas Fed's, or estimated by analysts from well economics. | Principally the International Monetary Fund, in country documents published on staggered vintages. |
| What moves it | Service costs, steel and tubular prices, well productivity, rig efficiency, the cost of capital. | Fiscal policy. A government that raises spending raises its breakeven without touching a well. |
| What it predicts | Whether new wells get drilled. It does not predict whether existing wells keep producing — that is the operating-cost figure. | Whether a state runs a deficit. It predicts nothing at all about physical supply, and is routinely quoted as though it did. |
| Typical level, this cycle | Roughly $43 to $66 a barrel of WTI. | Frequently quoted between $80 and $113 a barrel for Saudi Arabia alone, depending on which of four incompatible measures is being used. |
The single most common error in energy commentary is to compare a fiscal breakeven against the current price and conclude something about supply. A government running a deficit does not curtail production — it borrows, draws on reserves, or cuts spending. If anything the causal arrow points the other way: a treasury under pressure has more reason to produce, not less.
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, first quarter 2026. survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026.
| Measure | Figure | Measured | Source | What it carries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WTI price needed to profitably drill a new well — all respondents | $66 / bbl | survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026 | Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas Fed Energy Survey, first quarter 2026; survey conducted March 11–19, 2026, published March 25, 2026 | An average of firm-level responses, not a cost measurement. Respondents answer for their own acreage, and the average is across firms, not across barrels. |
| WTI price needed to cover operating costs on an existing well — all respondents | about $43 / bbl | survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026 | Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas Fed Energy Survey, first quarter 2026; survey conducted March 11–19, 2026, published March 25, 2026 | The shut-in threshold rather than the drilling threshold. The gap between this and the new-well figure is the whole reason production does not fall when price does. |
| New-well breakeven — larger firms | $59 / bbl | survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026 | Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas Fed Energy Survey, first quarter 2026; survey conducted March 11–19, 2026, published March 25, 2026 | Firms producing 10,000 barrels per day or more in the survey's own definition. |
| New-well breakeven — smaller firms | $68 / bbl | survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026 | Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas Fed Energy Survey, first quarter 2026; survey conducted March 11–19, 2026, published March 25, 2026 | The nine-dollar spread between large and small is the scale premium, and it is larger than the spread between most named basins. |
| Range of new-well responses | $62 to $70 / bbl | survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026 | Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas Fed Energy Survey, first quarter 2026; survey conducted March 11–19, 2026, published March 25, 2026 | Reported as a range across regions. The Institute prints the range and not a basin-by-basin split; see the gap note below. |
| Range of existing-well operating-cost responses | $34 to $47 / bbl | survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026 | Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas Fed Energy Survey, first quarter 2026; survey conducted March 11–19, 2026, published March 25, 2026 | Even the top of this range sits far below the current price, which is why nothing is being shut in for economic reasons. |
Two things in that table do the analytical work, and neither is the headline number. The first is the gap between drilling and operating: a new well needs about $66 and an existing well needs about $43 to keep running, a spread of $23 a barrel. That spread is why American production does not fall when the price does. A price collapse stops the next well; it does not stop the last one.
The second is the spread between large and small firms: $59 against $68, or $9 a barrel of scale advantage. That is wider than the spread between most of the named basins in the same survey, which means firm size explains more of the variation in drilling economics than geography does — and basin-level breakevens, the figures that get quoted, are averaging across it.
Set the survey against the current price. WTI opened at $92.69 on September 8, 2026, which is $26.69 a barrel above the all-respondent new-well breakeven — 40% above it — and $49.69 above the level at which an existing well would be shut in. On the survey's own numbers every well in the sample is economic to drill and nothing in it is economic to shut. The rig count has moved by 8 rigs. That disagreement between the economics and the behaviour is the most important thing on this page, and it is measured on the rig ledger.
These responses were collected survey responses collected March 11–19, 2026 and published March 25, 2026 — near the beginning of the disruption, not during it. A breakeven is a cost figure, and costs have a clock of their own: service rates, steel, tubulars and crew availability all respond to a drilling cycle with a lag. Whatever has happened to well costs since March is not in these numbers, and the direction is not knowable from them. Treat $66 as a March measurement, not as today's cost.
A deliberate omission, stated rather than filled with an estimate.
The basin-by-basin split is a deliberate omission. The Dallas Fed publishes its regional breakeven table as chart images and a spreadsheet attachment rather than as page text, and the Institute has not obtained either in a machine-readable form. Secondary summaries of that table circulate widely and they do not agree with one another: the Midland and Delaware sub-basins have been reported at 69 and 63, at 62, 64 and 70, and at 61 and 62 by different outlets citing the same survey. The standing rule here is that conflicting figures are not reconciled by choosing one. Until the primary table is in hand, this page carries the all-respondent figures and the published range, and no basin split at all.
This is the standing rule across the Institute's references and it is worth stating in the abstract because it recurs: where sources conflict, the conflict is the finding. Picking the most-cited of four figures produces a page that looks more complete and is less true, and it hides from the reader the one thing they most need to know, which is that the number is not settled.
The more widely quoted family, and the one the Institute can source least.
Fiscal breakevens by country are absent for the same reason and it is worth stating plainly, because they are the more widely quoted of the two families. A fiscal breakeven is the oil price at which a government balances its budget — a question about a treasury, not about a rock — and it is published by the International Monetary Fund in country-specific documents on staggered vintages. The Institute has not obtained a single one of them from a dated IMF publication. Saudi Arabia alone has four incompatible figures in circulation, from roughly $80–85 to $90.94 to $96 to roughly $113, and the highest of the four is not the same measure as the other three: it includes transfers to the sovereign wealth fund, which is a policy choice rather than a budget requirement. Printing any one of them would be picking a number. This page instead does the thing the numbers cannot do for a reader, which is explain what the two families of breakeven actually measure and why they must never be averaged.
Note the specific trap inside the Saudi figures. The highest of the four circulating numbers includes transfers to the sovereign wealth fund. That is a discretionary allocation of a surplus, not a requirement of a budget, so the high figure answers a different question than the low ones. Two numbers that measure different things are not a range, and printing them as one would be the error this ledger exists to prevent.
Breakevens are not the binding constraint right now, and quoting them as one is a category error. Price is 40% above the surveyed new-well breakeven and the American rig count has barely moved. When price clears cost by that margin and the physical response is absent, cost is not what is stopping the response.
What the survey actually reveals is an expectations problem, not a cost problem. The same firms told the Dallas Fed in April that they expected the disruption to resolve quickly and that they thought a repeat was very likely within five years. Nobody underwrites a decade of drilling against a price they expect to be temporary. The full survey is on the chokepoints ledger.
The operating-cost figure is the one to watch on the way down. At about $43 a barrel it marks the level at which existing wells start being shut in rather than merely un-drilled, and it sits far below anything in this cycle. It is also the figure that explains why the last price collapse took years to show up in production, and why the next one will too.
Neither family of breakeven is a forecast and neither is a floor. A wellhead breakeven describes the conditions under which a firm said it would drill, asked in a survey, at a moment in time. A fiscal breakeven describes an arithmetic property of a budget document. Prices have spent long periods below both.
Prices, the supply and demand balance, refining, the two-clock rule and the plain-English glossary that serves all 13 ledgers.
Back to the hub →LedgerWhere every cent of a $4.48 gallon goes — crude, refining, distribution and tax — with each of the four components on its own clock and three of the four defined differently from how a reader assumes.
Open the ledger →LedgerSeventy-six years of crude prices deflated to constant July 2026 dollars. The 2008 records are still records in real terms and today's are not close.
Open the ledger →LedgerOne central bank, one date, one fixing time. A dollar barrel converted into 29 currencies without mixing thirty sources and thirty clocks.
Open the ledger →LedgerWhat the shape of the curve does to inventory and why it drives storage behaviour rather than describing it — then the full strip: 63 listed WTI months from the exchange's own Daily Bulletin, $96.05 front against $72.60 a year out, $23.45 of backwardation, open interest printed beside every settlement.
Open the ledger →LedgerAll 41 countries the OPEC bulletin itemises, ranked, with share of world total and reserve life computed two ways. Venezuela first at 303.701 billion barrels; the United States ninth with a reserve life of 8.4 years.
Open the ledger →LedgerEvery OPEC+ member's output for July 2026 against its implied target and its sustainable capacity. Effective spare capacity is 1.09 mb/d, or 1.07% of a 101.5 mb/d market.
Open the ledger →LedgerThe seven countries that hold the voluntary cuts — not eight, and not the full membership — their August and September 2026 decisions, and why quota discipline is currently the wrong lens.
Open the ledger →Ledger588 rigs turning in the United States, 449 drilling for oil, 1,907 worldwide. A forty per cent move in price has produced a 1.4 per cent move in the American count.
Open the ledger →LedgerCapacity measured on two clocks five months apart, crack spreads computed from same-week legs in both units the market quotes, and the one undated figure on this reference, labelled as such.
Open the ledger →LedgerDiesel at $5.967 a gallon, a nominal record and not a real one. Why distillate is tighter than gasoline, and why distillate fuel oil is not diesel.
Open the ledger →LedgerCommercial crude one per cent above its five-year average in the same week the Strategic Petroleum Reserve reads 39.3% of capacity and its lowest since November 1982. The two facts are causally linked.
Open the ledger →LedgerEight passages, six years of flows each, and bypass capacity that covers under a quarter of Hormuz. Plus what the industry itself expected in April, measured, and how wrong it was.
Open the ledger →Provenance. Reserve figures are transcribed from the OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin; production, spare-capacity, stock and refining figures from the International Energy Agency Oil Market Report; United States production, refinery capacity and inventory figures from the Energy Information Administration; rig counts from the Baker Hughes North America and Worldwide rig counts; benchmark prices from published daily quotes. Each row names its source and the date the figure was measured. Where a figure was not published, or where a published series does not itemise a country, the cell reads n/d rather than carrying a fabricated estimate. Derived quantities — reserve life, shares of world total, capacity utilisation, spare capacity as a share of supply — are computed from the figures shown and are not separately sourced; they inherit the measurement dates of their inputs, and where the two inputs run on different clocks the page says so. The Baratelli Institute is a publisher operating under the Lowe v. SEC publisher exception. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security or commodity. Figures change; verify against the primary source before relying on any of them.