Comments by "Bo McGillacutty" (@Mrbfgray) on "Why The Middle East Won't Survive Without Oil" video.

"Known oil reserves" besides shale oil which 10X all the rest but are completely neglected other than the US.
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@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 I always struggle to keep a comment brief as it won't be noticed otherwise. How polluting it is debatable, it does need proper regulations, practices and need not be environmentally detrimental. But yeah--it's made USA not only energy independent but also substantially reduced our CO2 footprint as cheap NatGas replaced coal, ironically allowing US to meet or exceed CO2 targets no other major economy has achieved. Coal is far worse than methane as energy source.
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@geoffreycharles6330 It's been recognized for maybe 150 yrs that there are huge quantities of petrol in vast shale formations all over the globe but it was simply too difficult to extract. Fascinating technology story unfolded in the USA where early this century new methods were developed to extract it at increasingly lower cost, now profitable around $40/barrel. This turned around US production which had been declining since 1973 prior peak to where we now exceed that level of production to become #1 global producer again. Two primary factors allow this new extraction--horizontal drilling where instead of punching vertically through a layer of oil bearing formation the drill can be guided in an arc to go horizontal along the formation Second is "fracking" (controversial and banned in many places including Europe, New York State...) where extreme pressures fracture the shale and sand injected to keep cracks opened and proprietary chemicals assist in flowing. This tech has allowed USA to also become biggest NatGas producer as that is also abundant in such shales. Brazil, Asia, Euro, extensive oil/gas holding shales are now potentially economic producers roughly 10Xing available reserves. I was expecting such tech to be exported globally but for various reasons it hasn't happened. (not that we need anywhere near that much fossil fuel anyway to transition away from it entirely)
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@jameskamotho7513 A round number like that is always a rough approximation, like "an order of magnitude". Figure it out for yourself--take the production of a modest section of well developed USA land and extrapolate that around the world. Or Google it.
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@jameskamotho7513 It dramatically reversed USA production decline to the fastest ramp up ever, you can't fake that Sport. It works. They can drill another 100 wells per rig in 3 yrs. End of debate.
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