What if a frac-sand shortage stalls US shale output?
A proppant/frac-crew bottleneck stalls completions and trims US volumes mid-cycle, nudging WTI up but capping it — DUC inventory and rig redeployment heal this within quarters. Closest analogue is the 2017 Permian frac-sand/crew tightness that widened service costs without a durable crude rally. Forward angle: today's efficiency gains (longer laterals, e-frac) mean a sand squeeze bites less than in 2017, so fade outsized crude upside.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A proppant and frac-crew bottleneck stalls US completions, slowing shale volumes mid-cycle. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Oil supply risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.