Thursday, July 17, 2014

EU At Risk Of Losing 30 Million Jobs To US Shale Revolution -- Bloomberg, July, 2014

On July 6, 2014, I wrote a long and rambling piece on Germany's plan to severely and intentionally cripple their economy.

Bloomberg continues the narrative:
The U.S. shale-gas boom is placing 30 million jobs at risk in Europe as companies with greater reliance on energy contend with higher fuel prices than their American counterparts, the International Energy Agency said.
Manufacturers of petrochemicals, aluminum, fertilizers and plastics are leaving Europe to take advantage of booming U.S. production of natural gas from shale rock formations, Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based adviser to 29 nations, said at a conference in London today.
Many petrochemicals companies in central Europe are moving out,” Birol said. “Thirty million jobs are in danger.”
The U.S. has become the world’s largest producer of oil and gas as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling help producers extract resources from shale rock. The country’s refineries processed a record volume of crude last week as plants took advantage of cheaper domestic crudes.
Chemical makers from Germany’s BASF SE to Brazil’s Braskem SA plan to invest as much as $72 billion in U.S. plants to take advantage of low-cost natural gas feedstock.
One of the biggest users of electricity are tech companies, tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. 

And so it goes. Thank you, Mr Bakken.

For more on Europe at a tipping point, click here

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps the most important nugget in that presentation: "Natural gas flaring. New regulations require operators to limit flaring to 24% by October 2014. During May 2014, 31% of the 1.2 Bcf/d of natural gas production was flared. This is down from 37% flared from Jan-Apr 2014 and we expect most operators to meet the limits."

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