In January, officials in Australia announced they had found a shale oil field that contained more "black gold" than what's found in Iran (137 billion barrels), Iraq (115 billion barrels), Canada (175 billion barrels) or Venezuela (211 billion barrels).Quote
Discovered underneath the small Southern Australian town of Coober Pedy in the Arckaringa Basin in 2008, officials estimated the lone oil field contained about 233 billion barrels of oil — just 30 fewer barrels than what officials report is found in all of Saudi Arabia.
Previous to the finding, geologists believed Australia only had 3.9 billion barrels. Collectively the world has 1.9 trillion oil reserves. If the Arckaringa basin does have at least 233 billion barrels, Australia will possess 12 percent of the world's oil reserves.
...but since then, I haven't heard much about these ballyhooed reserves.
Was this all hype? Or does Australia have the potential to develop into the next Oil Superpower?