FINANCIAL TIMES: The US is poised to overtake Russia as the world’s second-biggest oil producer after Saudi Arabia next year, thanks to the shale revolution, according to the International Energy Agency.
US crude oil output has surged 50 per cent since the start of 2010 as companies have applied new techniques such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to extract oil from shale rock formations in states such as Texas and North Dakota.
Those efforts are having an intensifying impact on the global oil market, forcing the world’s largest exporters to look to new markets as US appetite for foreign oil wanes and increasing pressure on other large oil consumers such as China and India to take on responsibility for protecting global trade routes… (more)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Reuters says USA is to become largest producer.
