Quote:
Originally Posted by TarJak
Those shale deposits, like ours are a long way from being an oil supply. Maybe when the price of oil is high enough to make the mining and extraction affordable it might start getting seriously tapped,
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I think you underestimate what is going on there currently - so did I, I got surprised by reading about the trend, too. The US is expected to become fully autark from foreign poil exports in the forseeable future - and become the world's biggest oil exporter or the second-biggest,
at around 2050 at the latest. The production costs for the new technology being used in fracking as well as in winning shale resources, have dramatically dropped due to the spreading of the new methods (they stay expensive only as long as their use is an exotic rarity).
At the German stockmarket there wa san analysis circulating around Christmas, saying that the US will overtake Russia in gas production in 2015, and in 2017 even Saudi Arabia. Autarky from eneryg imports could be reached until 2020, this analysis' authors said.
However, it will cause havoc on the landscape and environment, of course. I mean not so much shale gas and shale oil, but I especially mean tar sand mining. But who thinks the US will choose against it when it could become independent from energy imports and could make money by becoming an exporter? I'm realistic - such a battle to chose nature preservation over oil production is already lost.
I was as sceptical as you are. I got somewhat overrolled by the pace at which this trend stampeded ahead.
Just a random find:
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-G...the-World.html