America’s trillions of dollars of investment in shale infrastructure has left competitors like the UK and Russia trailing in the dust, according to a panel of experts.
Unconventional oil and gas recovery was the hot topic at the fifth annual University of Oklahoma Energy Symposium yesterday (THUR).
Although already considered ‘old hat’ in the US, talk about shale recovery in the UK is still widely debated.
The Scottish Government event went as far to put a ban on ‘fracking’ until further studies into the long term implications are understood.
Bruce Stover, who once headed up the North Sea’s Endeavor International Corp., said America had led the way with the method of using high pressure liquid injection to force oil and gas reserves out of the ground.
And he said the competitive advantage of having already paid out the the start-up costs for pipelines and transportation would mean the US shale business would continue to boom as other countries struggle to with legislative red tape.
He said: “When you think about it, other countries haven’t even tapped the technology in their shales.
“We looked at this five years ago in our first symposium.
“The lack of access to land, the policies like ‘not in my back yard’ in Britain are going to slow down the pace of that.
“The lead that America has with its shale field is so astonishing that people say when will Russian, Chinese or British shale catch up?
“No one in the world can replicate for a very long time.”