The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

i wouldn't get too enthusiastic about the shale related comments. Maybe i'm overly cynical but the comments look a bit shady. They mention shale first without a modifier so average Joe thinks shale gas because that gets all the press play. It's only later they specify 'oil shale'. Liquids producers can afford these kinds of analyses but most shale gas producers either can't afford them or do them inside their own operations (e.g. CHK). In addition, i think the spatial resolution on CT is a bit bigger than what your quoted section implies (i.e. CT can't do nanometer scale unless the number has a few digits in front of the decimal).

I'm not sure who the pressure pumper is that you asked about in your follow-up post. if it refers to north america it's probably HAL or BHI. Something close to 99% of oil wells in NAM use pressure pumping and HAL is the biggest service company in NAM (which is non-standard geography because oil biz NAM doesn't include mexico).