“The Permian Basin, although the granddaddy of all horizontal plays, would take years of drilling to take us to oil nirvana. The biggest problem is having enough water to frac with.”
I am in PA sitting on top of the Marcellus and Utica shale deposits. We have many rivers and some Great Lakes that provide much more water than will ever be needed.
Yes, Natural Gas is different from oil but the technology to make internal combustion engines run on either or both oil & compressed gas has been around for a loooong time. Not prohibitively expensive, either.
Well, start building your water pipeline. Either way, it would take years to drill enough wells to offset our imports. Natural gas is a whole other story. It will be abundant for another century, if not longer.
My oldest brother installed a conversion system on his chevy pickup with 350 CI engine in the late 70’s. Ran like a champ.