Why I believe that the peak of US shale oil is behind us
(You are welcome to listen to this song: "Saturn x Slow Dancing In The Dark - SZA, Joji" when reading this blogpost)
(A continuation of this blogpost)
Here are eight reasons why I believe that the peak of US shale oil is behind us:
1) "The low hanging fruit principle". The best locations in shale are already drilled. See this blogpost of mine. EROEI is declining fast, and will continue to decline at an accelerated rate.
2) High interest rates, which are expensive for the heavily indebted shale oil industry. This will probably continue, at least for a while, because the Federal Reserve is eager to kill the rising inflation monster. Which brings us to
3) High inflation in the US economy, which have made everything more expensive, and which makes prices continue to go up, which makes everything that the shale oil industry depend on, more expensive. This is one of the reasons why the oil price today was at a whopping 96,60 dollar (Brent Crude). See for yourself here (click on the "Brent Crude" in the table, and see the history of the Brent price in the charts. Today it was 97.67. Addition 28.9.2023).
4) A day of reckoning for the growing mountain of debt that the US shale oil industry has become dependent on. High interest rates are what bring the day of reckoning closer and closer.
5) A deteriorating overall US and global economy. The coming popping of the "Everything Bubble". More wars that eat our finances. Everything is interconnected, and thus the ongoing collapse of especially the US economy will affect the shale oil industry deeply. Michael Snyder says in this recent blogpost that food in the US has become absurdly expensive. By the way, Snyder, whose blog I have followed for a long time, seems to break out of his energy blindness in this blogpost, where he mentions that the end of cheap energy is upon us.
6) The broad awakening to the horrible pollution of groundwater in the wake of the shale oil industry. See this recent article by Kurt Cobb on his blog Resource Insights (1). This will be discussed more and more, as it becomes more and more difficult to hide. The more we discuss it, the more it will cost the shale oil industry. It will, if nothing else, make investors flee this horrible industry.
7) The nowadays much touted "Green Transition" is bad news for the fracking industry, and will spell its slow demise. The more so the more we speak and write about it. We all know that this will just grow and grow, exponentially.
8) Global warming, which is a direct result of among other things the actions of the fracking industry, will become so serious that it wakes us all up (probably soon, much because of the ongoing El Niño, which will continue until next year), and cost so much that we will see investors flee more and more from the shale oil sector. The US government will probably rise taxes more and more for all kinds of carbon polluting industry, and try to navigate its way to a lower standard of living, through "The Great Reset", Central Bank Digital Currencies (CDBC:s) and an effort to electrify the economy, at least partly.
This is an interesting recent article about the coming oil shock: "The Approaching Energy Shock
A massive oil shock could be just around the corner. And nobody is talking about it." (published by Sarah Connor on the site Collapse 2050 on September 27, 2023)
(1) From the article:
"Eleven years ago, I wrote about the how millions of holes drilled deep into American soil were already destined to pollute groundwater across the United States, making many areas uninhabitable to humans who rely on such water. I warned that the so-called shale oil and gas boom would make this problem dramatically worse.
Now that problem has reached the news pages of southern Ohio, and this will likely just be the beginning of coverage of fracking-related damage to the country's groundwater supplies."
