United States holding more untapped oil than Saudi Arabia or Russia
Report from Rystad energy esitimates US has 264bn barrels of oil reserves
- The figure elevates the country to the highests stock of oil reserves in the world
- Oil prices have crashed to unprofitable levels for many shale oil fields
A report published by Rystasd Energy claims that the United States now has the largest reserves of untapped oil than any other country in the world.
264 billion barrels of oil is currently held in reserves by the US, eclipsing that of both Saudi Arabia and Russia.
The figure includes oil in existing fields, as well as new projects and projections for undiscovered areas.
According to Rystad, more than half of that quantity is in the form of unconventional shale oil. Thanks to fracking and new technologies, this type of oil, which was previously unreachable, has projected the US to the upper reaches of oil producers.
"This has been a revolution. Ten years ago nobody would have dreamt this would have been the result," Jarand Rystad, CEO of Rystad Energy, said during an interview with CNN Money.
The output of US oil has slowed in the past year due to the fall in prices making its production unprofitable in some quarters.
Thanks to the shale oil boom, the U.S. is now sitting on more oil reserves than Russia, which Rystad estimates as having 256 billion barrels of untapped oil. The next-richest countries in terms of oil after that are: Saudi Arabia (212 billion), Canada (167 billion), Iran (143 billion) and Brazil (120 billion).
In the state of Texas there is more oil reserves than in the whole of China, 60 million barrels.
Rystad went on to warn of the dangers of using the surplus oil, which they estimate as being 70 times the current global annual production rate.
"There is a relatively limited amount of recoverable oil left on the planet," they said. "Oil alone cannot satisfy the growing need for individual transport," Rystad concludes.