(
this is what I have written on shale oil before on this blog)
The oil industry is surviving and doing well much because of US
shale oil (fracking), a "heroic" (although not in the eyes of Mother Earth and God) effort to squeeze oil out of rocks by "
hydraulic fracturing", a very complicated and expensive process. This is perhaps the greatest industrial mobilization in history, and the most expensive, too. Maybe it is the most desperate and the most critical, too *.
Everything stands and falls now with this industry, it seems. Remember that oil is the life blood of industrial civilization, what makes everything work, what keeps trucks running, what keeps the supply chains working. When shale oil peaks and declines, overall oil production will begin to decline precipitously. So, what do the experts say about the peaking of shale? Here are some suggestions:
A peak in 2023?
"U.S. SHALE OIL FIELDS BECOMING EXHAUSTED: Forensic Analysis Shows New Production Isn’t Offsetting The Large Declines
Thus, 2023 will likely be the Year the wheels begin to fall off the Mighty U.S. Shale Oil Industry."
A peak in 2024?
A peak in 2025 or before?
* * *
And 2026?
I find it unlikely that US shale oil production will grow beyond 2025. I find almost nothing about a shale peak in 2026 or beyond, on the internet (although I know that some scientists are very optimistic and put the peak around 2030, see this article). Justin Mikulka writes in this article from December 7, 2022, on DeSmog:
"The final non-starter option would be to produce another 4.5 million barrels per day of U.S. shale oil by 2025. That would require the industry to find another shale play comparable to the Permian, which is unlikely to happen since few people are currently spending the money to look for new shale oil “hot spots” in the United States, as the Wall Street Journal reported."
I think, based on all the articles above, that a peak in US shale oil is likely to happen 2025 or before, 2025 at the latest. After that there will probably be a decline, and probably a steep decline, a Seneca Cliff, I think, not a decline as in a smooth Hubbert curve. Around the same time, 2025-2026, we will also have so little net oil exports left on the world oil market, especially diesel exports (I have documented this in my book on oil exports 2022, here), which is crucial, that I think the Collapse of Civilization will begin then, in a way everyone in the civilized world will feel. If shale oil peaks in 2025, the Stock Market could crash really hard a couple of years after that, in 2027 or 2028, just as it did after the 2005 peak of conventional oil ("The Great Recession" started in 2007). The Collapse of Industrial Civilization will not begin in the Stock Market, because it is such a bubble, and will continue to be a bubble, it is not in touch with reality, it is mostly online and mirrors the growth of the online world and online business, no, it will begin in the shelves of our shops and grocery stores, and in the price of food and energy, which, already on the rise and very high, will just continue getting higher. That is what really matters, everything else is just luxury. For the poor in the world, food and energy is what really matters. We can cut our discretionary spending a pretty long way without really feeling the impact, but in 2025-2026 I think we will feel the impact of the collapse (which is already underway), everyone of us.
So keep your eyes on 2025 and 2026, because that is the time I think many things will really take off. Enjoy the time we have left in a relatively peaceful and plentiful civilization. And be ready for divine intervention when civilization really begins to collapse. Anything could happen. I'm ready for "the Rapture".
I have written more about the year 2025 and its significance in prophecy, here and here.
* In order to get a perspective on how shale oil has saved the world economy, read the following articles:
And:
"But no other source seems set to provide the kind of growth U.S. shale oil provided, that is, 73.2 percent of the global increase in oil production from 2008 through 2018."
Observe that 2018 was the year when "All Liquids" peaked, according to many experts. Most of the global post 2005 oil growth has come from the US.
