The price of crude oil and natural gas is the engine that drives the energy industry. In the late 1990s, in the wake of the Asian economic downturn, oil prices sank to $10.00 per barrel. The slump drove many small independent oil and gas producers out of business and many of the large independent producers merged, resulting in a downturn of drilling activities. Oil service companies had fewer rigs to service, pipeline and storage companies had less oil and gas to transport and store, and refineries produced less gasoline and other petroleum products.
The global economy has rebounded in the new millennium. Demand for crude oil, natural gas and petroleum based products has soared in Canada, United States, China and India. This increased demand for energy and the political turmoil in oil-producing regions has caused energy prices to soar and the industry has rebounded. The higher prices have reached most of the industry - producers, refiners, pipeline companies, equipment makers, oil field service providers, and gas station operators - which have all enjoyed new profits. Leading the charge are the world's largest integrated oil companies: Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal/Dutch/Shell. But aggressive domestic independent production companies, such as Shallow Oil & Gas, are also well-positioned to take advantage of improving prices.
Shallow Oil & Gas Inc. is focused on acquiring mature, oil and gas wells in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Ontario, Alberta and overseas.
The Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy has reported there is the potential to meet the demand for an energy thirsty nation by recovering over 43 billion barrels of additional oil from currently stranded oil reserves and mature oil and gas wells in the United States alone. Please visit www.fossil.energy.gov to confirm.
Developing these resources will provide significant revenues to state and provincial treasuries, provide thousands of additional domestic jobs, and improve the North American trade balance by reducing imports.