Will America Soon Rule the oil World?

America's biggest new source of oil wasn't discovered. It was already mapped, already leased, and in many cases already sitting right next to wells that are pumping today. The problem? Modern shale wells leave about 90% of their oil in the ground. Now, two quiet oil breakthroughs are finally going after it. In West Texas, ExxonMobil is turning petroleum coke, a black leftover from oil refineries, into lightweight grains. Because they are lighter than sand, they travel deeper into fracking cracks and hold them open, reaching oil that ordinary sand never could. Early results show up to 20% more oil from each well. Add four-mile "super-lateral" wells in the Permian Basin, and America is getting far more oil from every well instead of just drilling more of them. Out in the deepwater Gulf, engineers faced a much scarier problem: the ancient Paleogene layer, where pressure reaches 20,000 pounds per square inch. Unlocking it took more than a decade of new engineering. That meant redesigned blowout preventers, eighth-generation drillships like Deepwater Titan, and pioneering projects like Chevron's Anchor field, Beacon's Shenandoah and BP's Kaskida. We also look at how American oil production went from a 1943-level low in 2008 to a record 13.6 million barrels a day. We explain how fracking works in simple terms, and why the next American oil boom may not need any new land at all. Will better technology keep America on top in oil, or will the world move on first? Tell us what you think in the comments. Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Beacon Offshore, Transocean, Journal of Petroleum Technology, Reuters. #OilBreakthrough #AmericanOil #Fracking #ShaleOil #Energy