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The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground
Article

The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground

Fueled by debt and years of easy credit, America’s energy boom is on shaky footing.

Bethany McLean
The New York Times, 2018
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Editorial Rating

9

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Recommendation

Pioneering firms deploying innovative technologies such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have led an American energy renaissance. Yet the boom has not occurred without a massive surge in capital raising and debt. Financial journalist Bethany McLean addresses the US energy transformation and previews what the next decade may hold. getAbstract recommends her thought-provoking examination of a potentially unstable US energy industry to investors, executives and energy consumers.

Summary

The state of the American energy complex in 2018 stands in sharp contrast to its position in 2008. Back then, as officials claimed global peak oil, US companies began installing horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rigs on domestic oil basins. These novel technologies did not arrive out of the blue: In the late 1990s, George Mitchell, a Texas energy company owner, demonstrated that he could extract oil and gas through rock formations deep below the ground with highly pressurized solutions comprised of liquid, sand and chemicals.

In the decade...

About the Author

Bethany McLean is the author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World and the co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room. 

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