Chancellor George Osborne announced in his Budget that he is giving new support to fracking companies so Britain can match the low-cost energy revolution in the US.

He said in his Budget speech: "We need to cut our energy costs. We're going to do this by investing in new sources of energy [including] a shale gas revolution."

The fault in this argument is the shale gas revolution in the US has peaked and costs are rising rapidly to extract remaining reserves.

On February 27 the authoritative Bloomberg business news service reported independent shale gas producers "will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back."

The article explains that shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods.

It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of one million barrels a day in North Dakota's Bakken shale, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

Bloomberg also cites the Houston-based Sanchez Energy Corporation company, which plans to spend as much as $600 million this year - almost double its estimated 2013 revenue - on the Eagle Ford shale formation in south Texas, which is the main drilling centre, along with North Dakota, for shale gas exploitation.

By contrast, the net debt of the world's biggest oil and gas exploration company by market value, ExxonMobil, is less than half of the cash earned from operations last year. Bloomberg stresses that it plans to spend 68 cents for every dollar it gets back this year.

Last month ExxonMobil's CEO Rex Tillerson even joined a lawsuit against a fracking well water tower being built near his $5 million Texas home, the Wall Street Journal reported.

On March 5 at its annual investors meeting in New York, ExxonMobil said it expects capital expenditures of $39.8 billion in 2014 - 6.4 per cent lower than last year's spending of $42.5 billion.

The company indicated it will reduce upstream spending and remain selective in terms of investments in downstream operations, as it loses faith in shale.

Exxon announced in June 2012 it was quitting shale gas drilling in Poland, one of the European Union's great hopes for shale reserves.

Talisman Energy of Canada has also scaled back its Polish shale investments after "disappointing" early attempts at extraction, the New York Times reported last year.

The fracking frenzy seems to be coming to an early end both sides of the Atlantic.