Shale Oil
Categories: Econ
Peak oil has been a thing for many decades now. Everyone wants to know: have we reached peak oil? Is oil only getting more expensive from here on out? Is the supply of oil on the downtick yet?
One thing is for sure: shale oil has pushed this timeline further out. Shale oil is oil that we’ve gotten from shale, which is a type of rock. We used to only have the technology and know-how to extract oil in big pools from down under. Nowadays, with hydraulic fracking technology, we can extract and process oil from shale...shale oil. It was once impossible...then expensive...and now, it’s hitting the mainstream, like regular ol’ oil.
Since we can now get oil from shale, the world now has much more oil to use up than previously thought. There’s a lot of shale in North America, which could be extracted and processed into oil. This shale oil would inject a lot of new oil supply into the oil markets.
With more supply comes lower prices...or stable prices, at least. As oil runs out, the price of oil will start to rise. But thanks to shale oil, it’s safe to say that we’ve pushed the timeline for running out of oil way into the future.
