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The world’s commentating class has been too quick to write off the U.S. as an economic and strategic hegemon.

Over the last week the International Energy Agency and OPEC have both capitulated on U.S. shale, acknowledging that the U.S. will achieve unparalleled dominance of global oil and gas by the mid-2020s.

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What they do not acknowledge – the “deformation professionnelle” of the oil culture – is that this will be followed by a Chinese and Indian switch to post-fossil-fuelled transport in the 2030s. The imperatives of climate policy will force this shift to electrification, Trump or no Trump.

For OPEC, the U.S. shale shock is a disaster

This sequence has grim implications for Russia and the hydrocarbon regimes, and for the oil majors with such a heavy weighting on the London Stock Exchange. It means the cyclical recovery of crude prices may be stunted, and painfully slow, before giving way to “peak oil” and irreversible decline as electric vehicles (EVs) reach critical scale.