Article Review-Analysis; William Engdahl says the Shale Oil Dream is Ending

Last Updated on July 1, 2019 by Hamad Subani

In a recent article, William Engdahl claims that the recent fall in global oil prices means that the North American Shale Oil Dream may soon come to an end. We examine the ramifications.

Engdahl’s reasoning is as follows:

• The concept of extracting oil from shale through an expensive and resource consuming process was the result of an American (or maybe Rothschild) fantasy of being divorced from the global oil supply. That way, the American war machine could continue unimpeded into oil rich countries, without suffering from the effects of destroying traditional crude oil supplying countries.
• The Shale Oil Dream was quickly upgraded to an investment scam, and the biggest victim was the American government. To quote,

The shale oil and gas bonanza of the past five years in the USA has been built on a foundation of zero Federal Reserve interest rates and huge speculative investment by hungry Wall Street firms and funds. Because of the ultra-rapid oil well depletion, when market oil prices collapse, the entire economics of lending to the shale oil drillers collapses as well. Money suddenly vanishes and debt-strapped oil companies begin real problems.

• Shale oil reserves are dramatically declining. And as they become more depleted, they require more resources to be extracted. The present fall in global oil prices means that it is no longer feasible in monetary terms to extract shale oil. The problem is further compounded by the fact that if shale oil extraction is halted, the oil retreats further down into the earths’ core. To quote,

A comprehensive new analysis just issued by David Hughes, a Canadian oil geo-scientist with thirty years’ experience with the Geological Survey of Canada, using data from existing US shale oil production that has now become public for the first time (the shale oil story is very recent), shows dramatic rates of oil volume decline from US shale oil wells.

At Cabal Times, we have always been skeptical of Shale oil. On January 16, 2014, I raised the question why gasoline prices in Canada were almost eight times that of Saudi Arabia, even though shale oil from the Rothschild Alberta tar sands had managed to break even with the then Saudi cost per barrel.

The fall in oil prices is a welcome relief. If the Criminal Elite had their way, they would inflate oil prices to the point where the Western middle class would be destroyed and poorer countries would have to halt their industrial development entirely. Their model of development is best embodied by the arcane and quixotic British railroad system (as opposed to the North American highway system). The hierarchical British society focused more on railroads than highways because they wanted to control transport, not enable it. The sight of private personal mobility is so nauseating to them that they would prefer you stop, in the name of Communism, Socialism, or even the Environment. Or maybe you could step aside from the driver’s seat in the name of Technology!

Shale Oil was never meant to be an alternative to OPEC. It was meant to profiteer from OPEC’s high prices, at the expense of the North American environment.

Related: New Documentary H2Oil Visualizes the destruction of both water and land in the Alberta tar sands