A lot has been said, speculated, chanted and so on about the shale oil and shale gas revolution in the United States, which has skyrocketed oil production in the country, specifically coming from Bakken Field in North Dakota, and Eagle Ford and The Permian in Texas, partly due to smart energy policy decisions by Obama administration, which has taken as its flagship reducing foreign oil imports from the Middle East and other volatile regions worldwide, becoming in fact a reality at least for now, raising domestic production to almost 10 MMBPD, ranking among the top 3 oil producing countries in the world along Russia and Saudi Arabia, and so far changing the rules of world oil markets, and prompting as well as revealing a harsh clash of powers and postures within the OPEC over prices, quotas and exposing the drama over who really is the absolute leader of this organization. But talking about the US oil production, it should be taken into consideration certainly reserves and the ratio reserves/production in the country, and in the current environment of a more than bearish oil prices scenario and the break even prices needed to sustain major projects for shale oil production in the US if such a scenario and current situation is here to stay or on the contrary, is a short lived dream for the US in its quest for energy security and self sufficiency. Are the Saudis willing to let this happen, having its long standing ally in the Gulf as a top producer and losing one of its biggest market and thus being this a tremendous game changer in the geopolitics of energy? What about Russia, and the steps that it can possibly take the Kremlin towards this? If the oil price below 80$ per barrel persists at least for a medium term, hardly the most prominent shale oil projects in the US can be sustainable, when one reads news about Iran, Canada talking over quitting prominent infrastructure projects if this landscape keeps rolling. So which is the true strategy here? The Saudis hitting hard against the U.S and Iran for commercial as well as politico-religious goals of supremacy? Or is it a bilateral well coordinated plan by Washington and Riyadh pointing to the destruction of Russia and Iran? Who will be at the end of the day the true winners of the current situation? The OPEC? The White House? Beijing maybe? And even more so, one persistent question if this shale oil revolution will persist and is here to stay, or will be a short-lived dream shattered by the House Al Saud? Only the time will tell.
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