Kudos to Peter for getting this one mostly right. I half-expected him to waltz right past the dirty little cornerstone of the American shale story: the uniquely consistent, beautifully chaotic U.S. system of subsurface property rights. It’s the only country on the planet where you can legally own whatever geological treasures are lurking beneath your topsoil—and, more importantly, sell them. In principle. And, most days, in practice.
This one structural quirk is responsible for most of the so-called “shale revolution.” It wasn’t only divine innovation or some superior American extraction genius. It was capitalism turned up to eleven and given a shovel. When you let the locals profit directly from whatever oily surprises they’re sitting on, they tend to become remarkably enthusiastic participants.
It’s the same reason farmers are practically giddy about planting wind turbines in their fields. They get paid handsomely for hosting these sky-high steel monuments to virtue. The checks arrive, the turbines spin, and everyone pretends this is a clean miracle. Until, of course, the turbines reach the end of their mechanical lives, the operating companies declare bankruptcy with impeccable timing, and suddenly the farmer is left with a colossal concrete tombstone and a metal tower worth scrap value at best. The environmental dream becomes a very real, very ugly liability bolted into their land.
Shale, for all its sins, learned the hard way over more than a century of catastrophes, lawsuits, blowouts, and regulatory fistfights how to handle its own messes. Oil and gas didn’t get responsible out of morality—they got responsible because the consequences of not doing so became even more expensive.Will the rest of the world ever adapt to U.S.-style subsurface ownership and the chaos-driven innovation it permits? Hardly. Most governments won’t even let you paint your shed a different color without a bureaucrat’s blessing, let alone claim ownership of what lies a thousand feet below. The world likes the results, but not the rules that made them possible.