Read MoreChart shows oil rig count may have long way to fall  Let's start with capital expenditures. A lot of people have said that capital expenditures won't change in the near term, but nobody told Continental Resources that. Late yesterday they cut their 2015 capex budget dramatically. It's now $2.7 billion versus a previous estimate of $4.6 billion. That is a cut! First quarter 2015 rig count will go from 50 to 34.  Other companies have announced cuts as well.  My point: the supply side of the equation will adjust much more quickly than most people believe.  Read MoreBrent oil $90 to $100 in 12 to 18 months: Pickens  "Most people don't understand how capital intensive it is to maintain oil production levels," one oil stock trader told me recently. This is particularly true of shale plays, he notes, but also applies to Russia, Venezuela, and even Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has said that it plans to spend $40 billion per year for the next several decades just to keep oil production flat and to double natural gas production.  Bottom line: I think anyone with a longer-term horizon (more than 6 months) should recognize how quickly the supply side could adjust. On this basis, many exploration and production stocks do seem attractive. Continental Resources is certainly positioning itself to do well when prices improve.  The one caveat is how you feel on the demand side. If there is indeed a broad global economic slowdown in 2015, then all bets are off. But that is not my baseline assumption.
Big oil stocks are still not cheap, but it may be more useful to look at capital expenditures and production estimate metrics.