Posted on 08/19/2011 2:20:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
For half a century, the global energy supply's center of gravity has been the Middle East. This fact has had self-evidently enormous implications for the world we live in -- and it's about to change.
By the 2020s, the capital of energy will likely have shifted back to the Western Hemisphere, where it was prior to the ascendancy of Middle Eastern megasuppliers such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the 1960s. The reasons for this shift are partly technological and partly political. Geologists have long known that the Americas are home to plentiful hydrocarbons trapped in hard-to-reach offshore deposits, on-land shale rock, oil sands, and heavy oil formations. The U.S. endowment of unconventional oil is more than 2 trillion barrels, with another 2.4 trillion in Canada and 2 trillion-plus in South America -- compared with conventional Middle Eastern and North African oil resources of 1.2 trillion. The problem was always how to unlock them economically.
But since the early 2000s, the energy industry has largely solved that problem. With the help of horizontal drilling and other innovations, shale gas production in the United States has skyrocketed from virtually nothing to 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply in less than a decade. By 2040, it could account for more than half of it. This tremendous change in volume has turned the conversation in the U.S. natural gas industry on its head; where Americans once fretted about meeting the country's natural gas needs, they now worry about finding potential buyers for the country's surplus.
Meanwhile, onshore oil production in the United States, condemned to predictions of inexorable decline by analysts for two decades, is about to stage an unexpected comeback. Oil production from shale rock, a technically complex process of squeezing hydrocarbons from sedimentary deposits, is just beginning.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
Obviously the Baraqqis are doing everything they can to torpedo this trend.
But with a Republican POTUS and solid majorities in Congress in 2013 it could happen.
Over the EPAs dead body. . . . . well sacrifices have to be made.
if that happens, those Middle East countries will be as important to us now as countries like Liberia are.
So, I won’t need to go out and buy me a hybrid or an electric car?
Maybe we’ll get those Chevy Volts cheap in garage sales somewhere.
the enviros have been interfering with oil and gas for decades.
Not gonna happen until there are no more than half a dozen Dems and RINOs are in the House, Senate; and none in the White House.
Not gonna happen as long as one shyster lawyer is allowed to practice in the USA.
Not gonna happen with Hugo Chavez or his ilk have the power to nationalize industries in Mexico, Central and south America.
The next pubbie president will likely eviscerate the EPA
Chevy Volts will always be expensive, due to rarity. So far, total sales since launch in 2010 is only 1500 (as of end of March). Like trying to find a Tucker.
A trillion barrels is more than 100 years consumption by the US market at current demand.
This is the fundamental reason we don’t have fusion power. Who wants to invest gigantic sums to develop it, when the technology to crush it on price has already been developed.
Peak oil is like a religion. Some people will always believe.
Obviously, we have only scratched the surface of supplies.
OPEC is the largest supporter of the enviromental movement in the USA...
The usual enviroretards are in the comment section at the story source. These people are certifiable Gaia worshipers.
This all sounds lovely and I hate to rain on the parade but there is a little problem called depletion. Depletion for shale is a hotly debated subject.
The reserves may be present but the production rate may not be. It will probably take lots and lots of wells producing little amounts per day.
Still, this is a better outlook than not because I really enjoy my stuff that burns diesel. Recreational bulldozing is a hard habit to break.
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