Thanks to “fracking,” the United States is reaching the top spot among world oil producers sooner than expected, and is “well on its way to realizing the American dream” of energy independence, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday. “But this does not mean that the world is on the cusp of a new era of oil abundance,” the IEA warned in its closely watched annual World Energy Outlook. Instead, the agency predicted that no other country will replicate the United States’ success with hydraulic fracturing and other unconventional technologies that have led to the North American boom in oil and natural gas production. (See related ” Interactive: Breaking Fuel From Rock ,” ” The Great Shale Gas Rush ,” and ” The New Oil Landscape .”) And by the mid-2020s, the Middle East—the world’s only source of low-cost oil—will again be unchallenged as the […]

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