Most notably the booming shale oil and shale gas production has substantially increased the scope of fossil fuel resources. Shale gas and oil production require hydraulic fracturing (fracking) which consumes a lot of water and large quantities of water are needed for releasing and processing bitumen. At the global level, there is way less w'ater used for fossil fuel extraction than for power generation (IEA, 2016), but this part of the nexus can be crucial for many reasons. Therefore, the w'ater intensity will be pushed up and in the absence of water regulation it might significantly increase water w ithdrawals and consumption from the fossil fuel sector, although IEA (2016) argues that water consumption may not have to increase.