Shale oil wells are gushers in their first year, then deplete rapidly. Shale companies therefore, have to keep ploughing more money into production just to keep output flat, a phenomenon known as the “Red Queen Syndrome,” named after Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. Shale wells typically bleed off 70 to 90% in their first three years and drop by 20 to 40% a year without new drilling. A recent IEA Report confirms this, stating that the world’s oil and gas fields are declining at a faster…