A reader writes:

I am a well-site geologist and work on horizontal drilling projects in NM and Colorado.

If you look at the rotary rig count  rigs around the world actively drilling for oil and gas, there are about 1100 rigs drilling in North America (US and Canada) and another 1000 rigs drilling in the rest of the world. Doesn’t this seem surprising? That over half the rigs actively drilling wells are in the US and Canada and there are so few, relatively, drilling every were else. The reason is, I suspect, that drilling technology has advanced so far that it is cost effective to drill in aging and unconventional fields in North America, where in the rest of the world there still drilling the “easy to get” oil and gas. Eventually, the advanced technology learned here will be applied internationally to further extract massive amounts of oil and gas from all the fields around the world. We might be at or near peak oil, but I think the curve will remain a plateau before it plummets.