Americas News
Report: No US Oil Independence by 2020
A new report by analysts at Canadian financial group Desjardins says the U.S. will not be "oil independent" by 2020, as some have suggested, according to the Globe and Mail.
The report finds that the U.S. has been headed in the direction of producing as much oil as it uses in the past decade thanks to relatively flat consumption and new oil sources, particularly the Bakken in North Dakota.
However, the analysts said, "for the U.S. to continue marching toward crude oil independence, several repeatable resource plays – similar in size to the Bakken – will have to be identified and exploited with large-scale capital investment, which would provide strong support to the energy services industry."
A more realistic scenario is that North America will achieve oil independence, with significant flows of oil from Canada and Mexico to the U.S.
A report released by Citigroup this March, and amplified since then by U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney, argued that the 2020 target for oil independence was a real possibility.
Critics have said that forecast was based on predictions that may not come to pass, including the state of California opening up the Monterey shale for drilling, the Washington Post reports.
