Editor’s Note: See No BP the US Did Not Surpass Saudi Arabia in Oil Production and Dumb and Dumber: US Crude Oil Export to refute the claims made in the first paragraph about US oil production figures.
The ‘fracking revolution’ has transformed the economics of oil production globally, with the US becoming a bigger producer than Saudi Arabia and – after decades of dependency on oil imports – even being able to export some of its surplus production.
US shale oil is unusual, too, in being privately owned: most of the world’s oil reserves (over 70 percent) are in state hands. Like the North Sea 30 years ago, in a world dominated by state-owned companies and publicly owned reserves, US shale could look like a new frontier for private operators on the search for fat profits.
