Over the last 12 months, crude production levels in the United States have spiked more than 10 percent. Many experts project that U.S. oil output will top 10 million barrels per day (bpd) sometime this year, or at the least next year. Essentially, the U.S. is becoming energy independent, a goal that governments failed to achieve over the last 40 years – we can thank the free market and the shale revolution.
The U.S. will eventually move ahead Saudi Arabia, which, at the same time, helps make OPEC irrelevant.
Here is an interesting chart from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI):
“Saudi America” is making Saudi Arabia obsolete. Nobody would have ever thought that just five years ago.
The Mises Institute correctly concluded in a recent piece:
“Yet that would only serve to delay the pain. In the end, shale oil production is radically changing the oil industry. Curiously, in ten years from now, it will be both the US and Russia that will be the major shale oil producing countries. We can only guess how that will play out in the (geo)political arena.”
The development isn’t because of the former administration or the current president, but just the wonders of the free market. Shale oil and fracking have helped the U.S. because an energy monster. Here’s a question: will U.S. foreign policy continue to be dictated by foreign oil?
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