Quote:
Originally Posted by RN7
Shale gas and oil reserves are also found in very large quantities in other countries notably Russia, China and Argentina among others. But America has a very significant advantage over the rest of the world in exploiting shale oil and gas for five main reasons; geology, technology, incentive, infrastructure and water. Fracking is still in its infancy but through current production from 14 major shale fields in the United States; notably Bakken in North Dakota and the Barnett and Eagle Ford in Texas; America has already overtaken Russia as the biggest producer of natural gas in the world and will soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producer of oil. By the 2030's America is projected to be entirely energy self sufficient. These figures are only based on what's being produced from active shale fields and conventional oil fields in the United States, but American industry is already retooling around petrochemicals because of it. But the biggest oil shale fields in America and the world hasn't even been touched yet, as they lie on federal lands beneath US western states. The Piceance Basin, the Uintah Basin and the Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are believed to hold between 1.5 to 3 trillion barrels of recoverable shale oil, which on the lower figure is five times the conventional oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Good news for us, and hard luck OPEC and Russia.
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Yeah th US is swimming in Natural Gas and will be for a LONG time. The biggest problem is transport. Ships are not as economically feasible for transporting gas as they are with oil. A trans Atlantic pipeline has been mentioned, but it has gotten about as much serious attention as a space elevator.