As recently as the mid-2000s, conventional wisdom held that U.S. crude oil production was in secular decline, while the nation’s demand for oil was expected to keep rising. But over the past five years, U.S. oil production has surged by more than 50%, while domestic demand has been more or less stagnant. Now, policymakers are less concerned than they were a decade ago about the nation’s reliance on foreign oil and are even debating the prospects of exporting crude oil from the United States. It’s all thanks to the application of advanced drilling techniques such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that have allowed energy companies to tap previously unreachable shale formations in places like Texas and North Dakota. But even though production from these shale formations has surged in recent years, it will eventually peak at some point. The question is when exactly. Is U.S. crude oil production […]