To put this in perspective, let's assume that there are indeed 75x10^9 barrels of oil. Fracking typically can only extract around 10% of the oil-in-place (the

To put this in perspective, let's assume that there are indeed 75x10^9 barrels of oil. Fracking typically can only extract around 10% of the oil-in-place (the rest is too expensive to recover once the reservoir pressure drops, even at $100/barrel)[1]. The US consumes 19 million barrels a day [2], so (75000 barrels*0.1)/(19bpd)/(365 dpy) = 1 year. All that oil would be burnt in a single year if it was the only source! [1] Consequently, the recovery factors for shale oil are typically lower than they are for shale gas, ranging from 3 percent to 7 percent of the oil in-place with exceptional cases being as high as 10% or as low as 1 percent. http://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/worldshalegas/pdf/overview.pdf http://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/worldshalegas/pdf/overvi... [2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=33&t=6 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=33&t=6