Shale Boom, Shale Bust: The Myth of Saudi America

Just about everyone has heard something about the ‘revolution’ in shale oil. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of rock formations unique to the United States offers the promise of cheap and abundant energy, terrific economic growth and jobs – lots of jobs. But in 2014, something went terribly wrong with this rosy scenario of “Saudi America”: An unexpected collapse in the price of oil that’s bankrupting the oil patch, destroying jobs and threatening any plans of a renewable energy future.



What happened? Why has this miracle ‘revolution’ generated so many losers and so few winners? Why isn’t the United States any closer to energy independence than it was before oil from shale was even imagined? What can be done to put the markets and the industry right so that shale can deliver on even some of what’s been promised?



Dan Dicker had more than 20 years’ experience on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he traded crude oil, natural gas, unleaded gasoline, and heating oil futures contracts for his own accounts. His previous book, Oil’s Endless Bid: Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy, was published by John Wiley & Sons in 2011 and was named one of that year’s Best Business Books by both Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Library Journal.

Dan is currently President and partner of MercBloc LLC, a wealth management firm, as well as a senior contributor at Jim Cramer’s TheStreet.com, where he writes on energy markets and investing in the energy space. He has lent his expertise as an oil markets analyst in hundreds of live radio and television broadcasts on CNBC, Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNN, NBC Nightly News, CNN and Yahoo Finance among others. Dan lives with his wife and family in New York.