US shale boom is same as dotcom bubble, says Russian oil executive He said the current oil market was similar to the rise of the technology sector more than a decade ago that saw companies' stock prices surge before collapsing several years later. The shale boom is on a par with the dotcom boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish," added Mr Fedun, who is worth around $4bn. Lukoil did not return calls from The Telegraph for further comment. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil dropped 6.7pc to $72.58 on Thursday, while WTI fell 6.3pc to $69.05. The sharp falls came after Opec's members agreed to keep oil production levels at 30m barrels per day (bpd), following three days of talks in Vienna. How Opec sets oil prices The meeting ended in anger, with Venezuela's representative, Rafael Ramirez, storming out of the secretariat after his proposal to make cuts of up to 1.5m bpd was rejected. Opec secretary general Abdulla Salem El-Badri denied the meeting was divided and that the decision will trigger a price war that could put shale oil drillers in the US out of business. Much of America's shale oil is expensive to produce and the industry is comprised of numerous small companies who were forced to leverage their operations with debt to fund the high cost of drilling wells through a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Should oil prices fall for a prolonged period of time many who have been forced to borrow at a higher rate could be forced out of business. Fracking has boomed in the US but is yet to take hold in the UK. No fracking has taken place in Britain since a ban on the practice was lifted in 2012, but Cuadrilla has applied for permission to frack at two sites in Lancashire. Third Energy, which is 97pc owned by Barclays Natural Resource Investments, the bank's private equity division, is also seeking planning permission to frack for shale gas near the Flamingo Land theme park in North Yorkshire.