Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Like children looking through a kaleidoscope who are unaware of its actual workings, the media and the public have been misled into believing that early production results in the shale natural gas and tight oil formations in the United States will be repeated again and again across the United States and the world.
I was in Washington, D.C. last week with PCI Fellow David Hughes and Energy Policy Forum’s Deborah Rogers to help counter the prevailing (and delusional) view that Fracking Will Save America!
•Fracking could ruin German beer industry, brewers tell Angela Merkel •Amerikas Schiefergas-Boom droht jähes Ende •Fracking Tests Ties Between California ‘Oil and Ag’ Interests •Most Americans don’t give a frack about fracking •UK shale gas reserves may be ‘bigger than first thought’ •OPEC, at its Vienna meeting, grapples with shale oil
The oil and gas industry has shouted from the roof tops for quite some time about the “shale revolution” and its supposed long term economic benefits…There is just one problem. It doesn’t happen to be true.
•At margins of shale oil boom, a tempered euphoria •Fracking envy •Radioactive fracking debris triggers worries at dump sites •Poland’s shale gas hopes suffer blow •Poland Shale Boom Falters as State Targets Higher Taxes •The fight for North Dakota’s fracking-water market
With no prior experience in grassroots organizing, Deal orchestrated a campaign against fracking in South Africa to protect the Karoo, a semi-desert region of the eastern Cape that he had come to know and love.
The Obama administration has come out in support of the idea of exporting U.S. natural gas. This stance is counterproductive and shortsighted, and if followed, it will prove harmful to domestic manufacturing (i.e., value generation) and to future generations of Americans.
There is one segment of U.S. industry that ought to be cheering for expanded U.S. natural gas exports–though I doubt that its leaders will be offering their support in anything above a whisper. The renewable energy industry would benefit from higher natural gas prices.
•Interview: Energy Investor Bill Powers Discusses Looming Shale Gas Bubble •Availability of oil in the long term is dubious, as oil prices could in fact retreat, helping the tanker market •Shale Oil And Gas: The Contrarian View
•Fracking is draining water resources, especially in the West •Whatever you think of fracking, this isn’t the way forward •Are Methane Hydrates Really Going to Change Geopolitics? •California Fracking Rules Plan Stirs Trade Secrets Fight
In drought-plagued New Mexico, water is gold. And this week, Mora County in the northern part of the state took a firm stand to protect its precious liquid.
Today’s shale gas boom has brought a surge of drilling across the US, driving natural gas prices to historic lows over the past couple of years. But, according to David Hughes, geoscientist and fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, in the future, we can expect at least the same frenzied rate of drilling – but less and less oil and gas from each well on average.
