Let me keep this simple. American energy independence is an enormous red herring, no matter how much the U.S. shale hawks and politicians want it to be true. I can already hear the air over the other side of the Atlantic turning blue as I sit in my airplane seat at 33,000 feet on the way to the OPEC meeting in Vienna. But just bear with me for a moment. What the U.S. shale industry has done in such a short period of time is stunning. Technologically, it is an extraordinary feat; the world of hydrocarbon energy production has been revolutionized. No-one talks about Peak Oil in any meaningful way anymore. No-one questions that shale has added billions of barrels and decades possibly to “in-the-ground U.S. reserves.” In fact if green technologies had done the same feat, then oil would already be history. But there is the point. It […]