| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
THE WORLD has been caught by surprise by the United States' shale-oil boom. Analysts and experts are still clashing about both its true extent and the possibility of extending a shale revolution beyond North America. In just a few years shale oil could make the United States the world's top oil producer. But a shale revolution is unlikely in the rest of the world, due to some unique factors that characterize the U.S. oil and gas patch. The single-minded focus on the future of shale oil, however, risks obscuring another evolving dimension of the global oil picture that defies the past pessimism spread by peak-oil theorists who claimed that shortages loomed: beyond the United States, the world's oil-production capacity is also growing much faster than demand.
|