CAN the United States of America become the world's leading exporter of oil and gas? Yes, you read it right! That's exporter of oil and gas! In 2011, the United States did become a net exporter of refined petroleum products. Numerous important professional studies have estimated that by the end of this decade America will be ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia and therefore become clearly the world's biggest producer of oil and liquid natural gas. Now that is what they call a massive game changer! There is a good and logical explanation for this. For more than 15 years now, the energy business in America has seen an enormous amount of interest or some even describe it as a great technological revolution in methods of extracting oil and gas. This has resulted in a completely new paradigm being established in the energy domain. Domestic supplies in abundance were established in shale gas, oil from shale, tight sands and deep water natural gas liquids. While everyone was logically predicting that the focus and the interest would be mainly on the renewable energy field, this new development was an eye-opener. The US will see a growth exceeding seven percent this year alone in its shale gas and oil extraction capacity and this figure will easily go into double digits by next year for sure. The impact on the oil markets will be enormous. Experts are already cautioning that crude prices will be dropping very soon as the supply capacity is exceeding demand which is greatly affected by the slump due to the global financial crisis. That is not even taking into consideration the further quantities of oil which will be poured into the markets by Iraq, Kazakhstan and Angola. It is also very clear that the increase in the production of shale gas and oil is, without a shadow of a doubt, the single biggest challenge to Middle Eastern oil producing countries. This is because the influence these countries have is not merely because of their enormous oil and gas reserves but is also about their great production capacity which enables them to be a source of stability whenever the market becomes turbulent. One cannot ignore that shale oil and gas companies will be driven to maximize income in the shortest period of time so the fear of price “dumping” is a valid one as all these oil companies belong to the private sector, unlike OPEC oil companies which are state owned and follow a stricter policy. We are entering a “wild” era in the politics of oil and gas. There are definitely new variables and great uncertainties. This is all said without ignoring the massive development taking place in alternative sources of energy which is witnessing a great boom and which will inevitably have an important impact.
