Rystad Energy, a small Norwegian oil and gas data firm released a contentious study several days ago, which concluded the US held more recoverable oil reserves than both Saudi Arabia and Russia. Although Rystad underlined that “more than 50 per cent of remaining [American] oil reserves is unconventional shale oil,” with an estimated 60 billion barrels in Texas alone, serious environmental and health risks were associated with their extraction. Still, the report raised highly controversial points about Saudi holdings, and opined that Riyadh will not be able to extract and export its black gold for very long. The question was not new, and while many wondered whether Saudi Arabia would soon run out, this was mostly fiction. Of course, state secrecy meant that few outsiders knew with any degree of accuracy what the country’s actual reserves were, and what were the correct total production levels to date. According to […]