The wishes of many seem getting close to fulfillment — finally!

Battered by an economic crisis of immense proportions and the growing emphasis on promoting efficiency, global crude consumption is already in the process of receiving a big hit in the near to medium term. And in the meantime, new technological and energy frontiers are emerging — clouding the distant horizon too.

Technological advances are redrawing, in the literal sense, the energy map of the world.

From the high Arctic waters north of Norway to a shale field in Argentine Patagonia, from the oil sands of western Canada to deepwater oil prospects off the shores of Angola, giant new oil and gas fields are being mined, steamed and drilled with new technologies.

Advances in technology have made such resources accessible.

Global deepwater oil production leapt to roughly seven million barrels a day in the last 11 years, up from 1.5 million barrels, and now provides about 8 percent of the world’s oil supply.

That production could double by 2020, according to experts.

Most of the drilling is in the Gulf of Mexico, off Brazil, Australia and India, and along the west coast of Africa.

But only about 10 percent of the world’s deepwater oil and gas fields have been extensively explored and drilled.

Cuba is also planning to start drilling exploratory wells offshore at the end of the year, and Mexico is slowly moving toward deepwater drilling to revive its flagging oil industry.

Drilling has begun in the deep waters off Ghana, and experts believe fertile fields exist all the way down the west coast of Africa to Namibia.

Total and Royal Dutch Shell recently made a major discovery along the coast of French Guiana, and neighboring Suriname is likely to become an important producer, too. And more new offshore fields may be discovered along the Brazilian coast and south to Argentina.

The coasts of East Africa are rich in gas, and China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and the Philippines also have significant deepwater potential. Heavy oil field in the Orinoco Belt, in the northeast part of Venezuela could also add up to 2 million bpd by 2020.

And, in the meantime, the “oil sands” in Canada, the “pre-salt” deposits in Brazil and “tight oil” in the United States, are changing the very landscape.

In little more than a decade, Canada’s oil sands have gone from being a fringe resource to a major one. Since 2000, production has expanded to more than 1.5 million bpd from 600,000.

With the Keystone XL pipeline project, Canada would move an additional 700,000 barrels a day.

Canadian oil sands production is expected to increase by as much as 200,000 barrels a day every year for the next two decades. IHS Cera projects $100 billion in investments in the oil sands over the next decade.

Yet, the biggest wild card for the future of both oil and gas appears to be shale and other tight rocks.

Shale gas production in the US is more than five times the 2006 level, and the country surpassed Russia as the world’s leading gas producer in 2009.

Poland is likely to be the next big shale player.

Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and other large international companies have leased already more than 8 million acres.

Drilling success in Poland could lead to more drilling in shale fields in Germany, Norway, Sweden, France and Ukraine.

With a goal of satisfying 10 percent of its gas demand from shale by 2020, China held its first shale gas auction in June.

In the meantime, the tight, Shale oil is in the process of revolutionizing the global energy dynamics. Many now believe that it could be possible for the US to cut crude imports from about 10 million bpd to about 3 million bpd by the early 2020s.

The Bakken field in North Dakota and Montana now produces 400,000 barrels a day, up from a trickle in 2007, and the figure is expected to soar to a million bpd by 2015. The first well was drilled in the Eagle Ford shale field in south Texas three years ago; the field now produces more than 100,000 barrels a day, with 420,000 expected by 2015.

There are 20 other shale and similar tight rock fields across the United States that could make states like Ohio and Michigan major producers.

Techniques such as those being used in North Dakota are being tried in tight oil reserves all over North America: In the Eagle Ford shale and Permian basin in Texas and the Utica shale in Ohio and Pennsylvania. IHS Cera forecasts that US tight oil production will rise from 900,000 b/d this year to 2.9m b/d in 2020 - roughly half of today’s total US output.

Meanwhile, over the same period, Canada could double its production from Alberta oil sands to about 3m bpd. In 2010, the US and Canada produced almost 10 m bpd and consumed about 22.5m bpd. Given the right opportunities and incentives — and the access to closed areas such as America’s east and west coasts for which the oil industry is lobbying — by 2035, the two countries’ production could rise to 22 m bpd. If demand could be held constant, that would cut North America’s shortfall to just 0.5 m bpd.

Meanwhile, the US, like other advanced economies, is entering the era of “peak demand.”

A slowdown in car use, tighter fuel economy standards for vehicles and greater use of ethanol, hybrids and electric vehicles are all helping to hold down demand.

It is quite possible that 2007, when the US used an average of 20.7m b/d, will form a historic high.

And not to forget the last frontier, at least for the foreseeable future, the high Arctic most of which remains unexplored. A 2008 assessment by the US Geological Survey estimated that roughly a quarter of the world’s remaining undiscovered conventional oil and gas is in the Arctic, more than 80 percent of it in forbidding offshore areas.

The operations accelerated after the discovery of an estimated 250 million barrels of retrievable reserves of high-quality sweet crude oil in the Skrugard field in April, the seventh-largest oil or gas find in the world this year.

And it was apparently in this perspective that Daniel Yergin said: “For more than five decades, the world’s oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that US reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow.

This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only US energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy.

But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed.

The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere.