[thackney]

while the US is using a lot of this technology, it has not spread to a number of the other major oil producing nations

That is false. Haliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger and Weatherford perform the majority of the US hydraulic fracturing activities and are all international companies.

[taxcontrol]

It is not a question of international COMPANIES. It is a question of LOCATION. Let me ask a rhetorical question as an example of what I mean.

How many of the previously producing oil fields such as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, etc are using this technology now?

I suspect that there is a fairly large percentage that are not using the newer technologies.