There is significant geopolitical implications of the emergence of shale gas an effective energy source. The North American continent can produce enough energy sources that it could be self-sustaining for many decades. This now means that the Gulf-region and East Asia energy producing nations have new competitor, and it happens to be the same place where they would ordinarily self the majority of these products to. This fundamentally changes the domestic policies in the US, now allowing them to be less dependent on foreign-sourced oil and other energy formats. The diplomatic implications between the buyer-seller relationship between these two regions have a to be determined outcome. The author notes that there is an opportunity and possibly and obligation to create a new global organization for gas-exporting nations, similar to OPEC, for oil exporting nations. This could aid in stabilizing the energy markets and subsequently, prices for natural gas across the globe. Understandably, the oil and gas industries are often paired together in a regulatory sense, but they ultimately are different in their economic functions as gas exploration is often on a long-term contract basis, demanding different considerations for profit-making efforts and change the calculus by which price fixing may be effective. Even with the absence of a global OPEC-like organization, there have still been a number of bilateral agreements between nations to help to fix markets between those nations. And for the time being, this may be enough to stabilize the markets for gas imports and exports to the level that is satisfactory for the buyers and the sellers.
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