Opinion | India’s state-owned oil companies should consider investing in US shale oil
US shale oil producers have been the biggest contributors to India’s energy security over the past decade. In the last 10 years, the US has accounted for almost three-fourths of all additional oil production worldwide, because of shale. As a result, it has also become the world’s largest oil producer, averaging 15.3 million barrels per day in 2019, a good 27% higher than Saudi production and more than double of what it was producing 10 years ago.
This is one of the major reasons why the price of oil has fallen from more than $100 per barrel in 2014 to $60 per barrel now. For India, which imported 1.45 billion barrels of oil in 2019, this fall in price translates into a saving of $87 billion for just one year. This is more than 3% of India’s gross domestic product, money saved by consumers (on fuel) and the government (on subsidies).
