U.S. Shale Won’t Replace Lost Middle East Oil

The U.S. shale patch cannot and will not come to the rescue of a potentially catastrophic loss of crude supply from the Middle East as the war in Iran set fire to the world’s most important oil-producing region. The escalating war and the de facto closing of the Strait of Hormuz is threatening to hold back more than 15 million barrels per day of oil supply for weeks and forcing Gulf producers to begin shutting down output as storage fills up. The International Energy Agency, which was created in the 1970s to coordinate actions during the…