Unless you’re from Boulder and lower oil prices make green energy look expensive – Americans, let’s be thankful that U.S. oil is pulverizing OPEC – MarketWatch.
Back in the good ole days…
Some numbers, first. In 2005, the U.S. produced about 5 million barrels of oil a day, in a market of about 90 million barrels a day then dominated by the 12 OPEC nations, including Saudi Arabia. And — this is the key part — even with all the growth in Asian nations and a recovery in the U.S., demand for oil is only growing about 1% a year.
Fast forward to today…
As fracking made it possible to extract ever more oil from shale rock, the Oslo-based consulting group Rystad Energy figured the U.S. and Canada would be able to produce 6.5 million barrels a day from shale alone by 2020 (with more coming from traditional wells). This week, Rystad partner Lars-Erik Nicolaisen told me that estimate for shale alone is now up to 12.1 million barrels a day.
And here’s the really funny part, for schadenfreude lovers: This doesn’t even count the Canadian oil sands, whose oil the Keystone XL pipeline is being proposed to carry for companies like Cenovus Energy CVE, -1.74% Those may produce another 4 million or so barrels by then, up from 2 million last year, the Canadian Energy Research Institute says.
So if you connect the dots, you can begin to understand why the left hates fracking. Ok, let me spell it out to you, it screws with the green energy narrative and is hurting the economies of countries and styles of government they support.
