(Business Insider) The country's colossal state-run oil firm, Saudi Aramco, is investing another $7 billion (£4.64 billion) in unconventional gas (shale) drilling in the country. That's more than double what the company had previously planned, according to the Financial Times.
That's at the same time that the plunging price of oil, widely accredited to Saudi Arabia's policies, is helping to stymie growth in US shale.
While Saudi Arabia apparently has the shale reserves it needs, what it doesn't have is the water that is blasted into the earth to free up oil and gas in the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. According to Bloomberg and Baker Hughes, Saudi Arabia may have the world's fifth-largest shale reserves, adding to its already tremendous mineral wealth.
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