By Nick Grealy,
No Hot Air
The importance of the US Energy Information Administration's report on World Shale Gas Resources cannot be understated. Paradigm shifting, game changing, even mind-boggling doesn't do justice to the revelations in this report. It's hard to know where to begin, and at 365 pages I haven't even begun to go beneath these mind-blowing figures. But they are astounding. As I've said a number of times: Shale gas doesn't change everything, it's much more important than that.
But there's one little adjective here that succinctly describes world shale gas resources: Vast. Let's go back to the thesaurus so we can let this soak in; the world's energy reserves are now officially:
vast
adjective
huge, extensive, expansive, broad, wide, sweeping, boundless, immeasurable, limitless, infinite; enormous, immense, great, massive, colossal, tremendous, mighty, prodigious, gigantic, gargantuan, mammoth, monumental; giant, towering, mountainous, titanic, Brobdingnagian; informal jumbo, mega, monster, whopping, humongous, astronomical, ginormous. ANTONYMS tiny.
World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States
U.S. Energy Information Administration
Background
The use of horizontal drilling in conjunction with hydraulic fracturing has greatly expanded the ability of producers to profitably produce natural gas from low permeability geologic formations, particularly shale formations. Application of fracturing techniques to stimulate oil and gas production began to grow rapidly in the 1950s, although experimentation dates back to the 19th century.
Starting in the mid-1970s, a partnership of private operators, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Gas Research Institute (GRI) endeavored to develop technologies for the commercial production of natural gas from the relatively shallow Devonian (Huron) shale in the Eastern United States. This partnership helped foster technologies that eventually became crucial to producing natural gas from shale rock, including horizontal wells, multi-stage fracturing, and slick-water fracturing.1
Practical application of horizontal drilling to oil production began in the early 1980s, by which time the advent of improved downhole drilling motors and the invention of other necessary supporting equipment, materials, and technologies, particularly downhole telemetry equipment, had brought some applications within the realm of commercial viability.2
U.S. Cites Flaws in UN’s Climate Talks, Says Treaty Effort ‘Unworkable’
By Jim Efstathiou Jr.,
Bloomberg News
The U.S. government’s lead envoy on climate change said the United Nations talks aimed at negotiating a binding treaty to curb global warming are based on “unrealistic” expectations that are “not doable.”
Todd Stern, the State Department official who heads the U.S. delegation at the 192-nation discussions, said that a meeting this week in Bangkok was “marked by struggles over the agenda” similar to “bickering over the shape of the negotiating table.”
The comments were the strongest criticism yet from the U.S. of the process aimed at capping greenhouse gases. They reduce the chances of a breakthrough this year and may distract from work at a UN meeting in New York today that will sketch options for raising $100 billion a year in climate aid.
