The Fracking Tiger is Eating the Russian Bear
It means having to finance superpower ambitions and military overstretch with half the global income the Kremlin had just a decade ago.
by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
March 22, 2017
The US shale industry has become a hydra-headed monster for Russia – and OPEC too. Before they have contained one threat, fresh dangers keeps popping up in new and expanding zones.
This war of attrition in the crude markets is lasting far longer and biting deeper than the energy exporting states ever imagined. It profoundly alters the geo-strategic contours of energy, and the global balance of power.
The Saudis have conceded that the 1.8m barrels per day (b/d) production cut agreed by Russia and OPEC will almost certainly have to be extended when it expires in June. Stunned veterans fear that the global glut could drag on through 2017 and into a fourth year.
New technology is reviving old US fields already written off as largely exhausted, and in the latest twist the impetus is spreading to ‘super-basins’ in Latin America that threaten to replicate the US success story in short order.
“The tiger is out of the cage and it is going to be very hard to …
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