Daniel Yergin was at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2013 when he got a daunting request: Could he pose the first question from the audience to Vladimir Putin?
“I started to ask a question, I mentioned the word ‘shale,’” he recalls, referring to a once-unconventional source of oil and natural gas that by then was flowing freely in the U.S. due to advances in production techniques. “And he started shouting at me, saying shale’s barbaric.”
Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global, discussed the incident on the latest episode of the “What Goes Up” podcast, along with other insights from his book “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.” US shale oil and gas have had a much bigger impact on geopolitics than people recognize, Yergin says. It has posed a threat to Putin in multiple ways, especially as US natural gas would compete with Russia’s in Europe.
Below are lightly edited and condensed highlights of the conversation. Click here to listen to the whole podcast, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
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