The Era of Oil Abundance

Yet now we are hearing a very different narrative. A growing number of key energy analysts say that technological advances and high oil prices are leading to a revolution in global oil. Rather than petroleum scarcity, we are seeing into a flood of new oil supplies from some pretty surprising places, led by the United States and Canada, these analysts say. Rather than worrying about cantankerous petrocrats, we will need to prepare for an age of scrambled geopolitics in which who was up may be down, and countries previously on no one’s A-list may suddenly be central global players.

One primary takeaway: North America seems likely to become self-sufficient in oil. “This will be a huge potential productivity shock to the U.S. economy,” says Adam Sieminski, director of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency. “It could grow the economy, grow GDP, and strengthen the dollar.”

OK, we get it — we will need to relearn our basic geopolitics. But how so? Last week, the New America Foundation gathered six leading energy analysts to take a guess as to the winners and losers over the next few decades from the unfolding new age of fossil fuel abundance (video here). Here’s what they told us: