Texas Shale Oil Is King

Surging shale oil production in Texas and North Dakota is being felt on trading desks in Chicago, Houston and New York, where a brisk business in West Texas Intermediate crude futures is far outpacing contracts for London-based Brent crude.

You can read the rest @
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-record-markets/texas-shale-challenges-north-sea-crude-as-world-oil-benchmark-idUSKBN1FM0IG

In a former life I worked for an organization which processed air permit applications for oil and gas facilities in Texas, so I caught a glimpse of what is going on.

As a beneficiary of the monetary proceeds from Texas shale oil, I'm somewhat happy about all this new drilling and fracking.

But as someone who must breathe the air and drink the water of Texas, I'm quite unhappy:

•  All these well holes will be there forever, and many of them will allow leakage into our groundwater;
• A heck of a lot of nasty emissions will enter our atmosphere; and
• A huge amount of toxic solid waste will be belched up onto our land.

On balance, the oil and gas industry is about as beneficial to humanity as the nuclear industry; i.e., not very much at all.