Has Fracking Changed America’s Role in the Middle East?
Holman Jenkins : “Speculating about counterfactuals can be a foolish exercise, but oil traders usually take fright at geopolitical upsets that threaten supplies out of the Middle East… A huge amount of surplus production is already sloshing around the world, mostly as a result of U.S. fracking. As a consequence, storage tanks are full to overflowing. Panickers and speculators may well be physically unable to drive up prices significantly if they wanted to.” Â
“Fracking overnight has relieved Saudi Arabia of its swing-producer dominance. Fracking overnight has relegated the Middle East to a sideshow, albeit a still-important sideshow, in the world economy.”