fact, it's trending in the other direction. And within six short years, the average Bakken shale oil well has been reduced to "stripper" status, which means that it produces approximately 15 barrels per day, or "the same rate that rain falls in Seattle," as Brackett puts it. That doesn't mean it's a dead well -- as the FT's Kate Mackenzie writes, "they can keep producing for years at that rate, of course -- as long as it's economic to do so. A quarter of the expected output from a Bakken well will be delivered during its post-peak "stripper" phase." Right now, Brackett says, there are just 200 modern Bakken wells that are strippers, but in six years he estimates that there will be more than 4,000. What it means is that more new wells -- many, many more -- will have to be drilled to maintain production levels. More importantly, it means that making forward-looking forecasts on North American oil production based on the output of shale oil wells that are in their first or second years of production is almost certainly going to lead to overly generous estimates of domestic energy self-sufficiency. This means that oil investors who are nervous about this flood of new supply, and who worry about whether it will do to the price of WTI what the shale gas revolution has done to Henry Hub, can breathe a bit easier. "We do believe US oil production will grow over the next several years and that