Despite US Energy Revolution, US Is Not Immune To OPEC Disruption

Rigzone is reporting:

While the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will likely be unable to defend its position on both market share and prices in the wake of growing U.S. tight oil supply, growth in non-OPEC supply does not mean the United States will be immune from a disruption of Saudi Arabian oil exports, a policy expert told attendees at a June 12 forum at Rice University.

The U.S. shale boom changed the perception that Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) would dominate the global oil supply, shifting the center of the energy world back to America, said Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director for energy and sustainability at the University of California at Davis, at the Energy Market Globalization: Investment and Commodity Price Cycles and the Role of Geopolitics.

Jaffe referenced a Wood Mackenzie study that estimates $80 billion will be invested in 2015 in North America tight oil plays as new pipelines and refinery upgrades transform the U.S. energy landscape.  U.S. liquids production also could potentially keep growing, with some estimates has high as 10 million barrels of oil per day. While Jaffe is not sure she agrees that production will rise as high as 10 million bopd, the production trendline is definitely up, with initial estimates of 3 million bopd looking "very achievable."