Here's something no one guessed five or ten years ago:
The US will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer by about
2017 and will become a net oil exporter by 2030, the International Energy Agency
said recently. That increased oil production, combined with new US policies to
improve energy efficiency, means that the US will become "all but
self-sufficient" in meeting its energy needs in about two decades - a "dramatic
reversal of the trend" in most developed countries, a new report released by the
agency says. The report also predicted that global energy demand would grow
between 35 and 46 percent from 2010 to 2035. Most of that growth will come from
China, India, and the Middle East, where the consuming class is growing rapidly.
The consequences are "potentially far-reaching" for global energy markets and
trade. For instance, Middle Eastern oil once bound for the United States would
probably be rerouted to China. Although there are several components of the
sudden shift in the world's energy supply, the prime mover is a resurgence of
oil and gas production in the US, particularly the unlocking of new reserves of
oil and gas found in shale rock.
Read
more in the NYT.
