Читать книгу The Energy World is Flat - Lacalle Daniel - Страница 9

The shale gas revolution is not just about natural gas. It is also about crude oil.

The engineering feats of horizontal drilling and fracking have been applied with great success in the extraction of crude oil from shale-like formations.

The impact of this “tight oil” is very significant, and has contributed to the growth towards record domestic production in North America.

I was in Moscow in 2006 when a senior executive of a large national oil multinational told me “shale oil is a bluff”. I started talking about the rapid development in technology and reduction in the cost curve, and how the trend would make tight oil economical within three years at above $70/bbl. I could see he was getting agitated. “I will not see shale oil reach a meaningful level of production, and neither will my children nor my grandchildren”. And four years later, during a debate in Spain with some peak oil defenders who had never seen an oil field in their lives, I was told again “shale oil is a bluff”. Yet, during that time, the production in North Dakota had increased threefold,4 twice as much as what doomsayers said would be “the peak”, contributing to the record US production, now as high as Saudi Arabia. Yet, still today I hear the occasional “shale oil is a bluff”.