15th March 2013
Thanks to the revolutionary extraction technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, it’s taken less than five years to reverse the previous 16-year decline in US oil production, and most of that gain has come from increases in shale oil output in Texas and North Dakota. US oil production gradually declined from 7.2 million bpd in 1992 to 5.0 million bpd in 2008, that 16-year decline was completely reversed in less than five years, as domestic oil production went above 7.15 million bpd last week for the first time in more than 20.5 years. That amazing, and unprecedented turnaround in America’s oil production in the last five years happened only because of the breakthrough drilling technologies that have accessed the oceans of oil trapped inside shale rock miles below the ground in Texas and North Dakota that were previously inaccessible with traditional extraction technologies. The impressive increases in US oil production in recent years are a tribute to the efforts of private investors and “petropreneurs” who developed the innovative, revolutionary drilling technologies that were able to access shale oil, and in the process, create an energy revolution in America.