The reference in the title to The Red Queen from “Alice in Wonderland” by the English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (perhaps better known from his pseudonym Lewis Carrol) who was an author, mathematician and logician, is deliberate to create associations with The Red Queen’s statement;“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place“.
This is certainly turning out to be applicable to the “tight oil” in the Bakken shale. If you were to believe the propaganda of the pretty blond woman in the TV advertisements Bakken shale deposits represent the path to US energy independence but is it true? The answer is no. Production from fracked shale oil drops off rapidly and they have already drilled the “hot spots”. In addition with oil between $50 and $60 dollars a barrel it is simply not economical. To keep production up it is necessary to drill more and more wells hence the Red Queen analogy. The major oil companies have already pulled out to concentrate on natural gas. That leaves the minors who are dependent on credit which is becoming increasingly hard to come by with lower oil prices. In addition there are the issues of ground water contamination and earthquakes. Shale oil may have postponed peak oil but didn’t end it. The same reduced oil prices also impact the Canadian tar sands.