Clean oil that only costs $20

Petroteq has already found interested partners in Mexico, where it has signed a lucrative deal with national energy company Pemex for its blockchain-based management platform.

Other companies are getting in on the action as well. By following Petroteq's lead, unconventional drillers are taking a second look at oil sands production.

Question of Cost

What made shale drilling in the U.S. so successful was the question of cost. At a time when oil prices were plummeting, American drillers used new technology to radically cut costs and maintain competitiveness. By 2017, shale drillers had reduced cost by as much as 42 percent.

Today, the average cost of a barrel of fracked oil varies between $20 and $50. That might look like a lot compared to cheap oil from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, where per-barrel costs can be as low as $10.

But that doesn't take into account “social costs” that OPEC states have to consider. The plunge in oil prices after 2015 placed immense pressure on OPEC states, which all depend on oil exports to maintain fiscal equilibrium.

Middle Eastern oil producers have endured immense pressure, while Venezuela was thrown into political and economic chaos by the drop in prices.

Social costs, according to a study by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, will increase the cost of OPEC oil in the coming years. While U.S. shale drillers can operate profitably with prices at $50 per barrel, OPEC countries ideally want $70 or even $100 a barrel to sustain their economics. This gives U.S. producers a massive competitive edge.

Now, thanks to technological advances from Petroteq and other companies, oil sands could be as profitable and as cheap as shale.

Through cleaner methods and blockchain-based management, Petroteq can produce for as little as $20 a barrel.

Petroteq's methods can be licensed anywhere, and could release the billions of barrels locked inside oil sands deposits all across the American West.

If its technology catches on, oil sands could be the next big play in the U.S. energy revolution, ensuring American oil dominance for years to come.