Rise in US Oil Supplies Haunts Opec Talks

Who would have thunk it?

At a seminar in the Opec headquarters in Vienna on Wednesday, the rise in US oil supplies was the shadow that fell over every discussion. Over the past three years, the US has accounted for the entire net increase in global oil output, excluding Opec members and former Soviet republics.

And what is causing the increase in supply?

Advances in the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, first applied to shale gas reserves, are now making it possible to develop US oil in reserves previously commercially unviable [sic].

DAMN that American ingenuity.

Read the article here.