Apparently it is, or, at least, according to this article on the price revolution in extraction of oil and gas from shale owing to horizontal drilling and fracking:
Nigel Lawson, “Thought we were running out of fossil fuels? New technology means Britain and the U.S. could tap undreamed reserves of gas and oil,” Dailymail.co.uk, 7 December 2012.
The really important news:
“[sc. it] ... emerged a few weeks ago that the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer in 2017.
America is already the world’s largest natural gas producer, and it is estimated that, by 2035, almost 90 per cent of Middle East oil and gas exports will go to Asia, with the U.S. importing virtually none.
For decades, the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, has had to shape, and sometimes arguably to misshape, its foreign policy in the light of its dependence on Middle East oil and gas. No longer: that era is now over.
For decades, too, Europe has been fearful of the threat that Russia might cut off the gas supplies on which it has relied so heavily.
No longer: that era will very soon be over, too. Thanks to the shale gas revolution, the newfound energy independence of the West is a beneficent game-changer in terms of world politics as much as it is in the field of energy economics.”
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