The Fourth Shale Revolution: Supermajor Tech

Peter Zeihan 5 min

The shale revolution is nowhere near done. So this year is not the last year of the shale revolution.

Chapters

  1. 0:00

    The Fourth Shale Revolution

    ExxonMobil uses petroleum coke as propant to increase output by 10-30%.

  2. 0:36

    The History of Shale

    Supermajors dominated the space after buying up smaller companies during busts.

  3. 2:47

    The Benefits of Propant

    Petroleum coke is less dense than sand, allowing it to push deeper into formations.

  4. 4:13

    The Future of Shale

    The shale revolution continues to set new records for output year after year.

Key points

  • 0:36

    ExxonMobil has now done is change the propant and is triggering what is basically the fourth shale revolution.

  • 0:36

    ExxonMobil was able to come in with its better capital position and buy up a lot of the smaller companies.

  • 2:47

    The real advantage is it has that it's a lot less dense, maybe 40-50% less dense than sand.

  • 2:47

    For a small increase in cost using what used to be a waste product, Exxon has seen their numbers increase by 10 to 20 to maybe even 30 percent in some wells.

  • 3:39

    The shale revolution is nowhere near done.

  • 3:39

    The shale revolution doubled the percentage of what was accessible within the U.S. space.

  • 4:13

    We're talking about 150 years of output.

  • 4:13

    The shale revolution continues to set new records for output, adding somewhere between a half a million and a million barrels a day per year.

  • 4:13

    This year is not the last year of the shale revolution. Neither is next year, or the year after, or the year after that.

  • 4:13

    The break-even cost for what it takes to get a chunk of oil out in an economically viable way keeps going down.

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