Posted on 05/11/2010 10:18:10 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
There's an energy revolution brewing right under our feet.
Over the past decade, a wave of drilling around the world has uncovered giant supplies of natural gas in shale rock. By some estimates, there's 1,000 trillion cubic feet recoverable in North America alone—enough to supply the nation's natural-gas needs for the next 45 years. Europe may have nearly 200 trillion cubic feet of its own.
We've always known the potential of shale; we just didn't have the technology to get to it at a low enough cost. Now new techniques have driven down the price tag—and set the stage for shale gas to become what will be the game-changing resource of the decade.
I have been studying the energy markets for 30 years, and I am convinced that shale gas will revolutionize the industry—and change the world—in the coming decades. It will prevent the rise of any new cartels. It will alter geopolitics. And it will slow the transition to renewable energy.
To understand why, you have to consider that even before the shale discoveries, natural gas was destined to play a big role in our future. As environmental concerns have grown, nations have leaned more heavily on the fuel, which gives off just half the carbon dioxide of coal. But the rise of gas power seemed likely to doom the world's consumers to a repeat of OPEC, with gas producers like Russia, Iran and Venezuela coming together in a cartel and dictating terms to the rest of the world.
The advent of abundant, low-cost gas will throw all that out the window—so long as the recent drilling catastrophe doesn't curtail offshore oil and gas activity and push up the price of oil and eventually other forms of energy. Not only will the shale discoveries prevent a cartel from forming, ......
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Thanks to Bobthenailer for pointing this article out.
We need a global price war with Saudi, like Reagan outspent the Soviets on defense.
Drill, Baby, Drill!
Shale (or anything to keep fuel costs down) won’t happen as long as environmentalist whackos have any say in policy.
Bunch of NIMBYs in my town just voted for a moratorium on drilling in the Barnett Shale here.
Shale (or anything to keep fuel costs down) won’t happen as long as environmentalist whackos have any say in policy.
That’s right. We could be freezing in our homes and they wouldn’t want us to cut down a tree to keep from freezing.
Environmentalist whackos also tend to believe that genocide against the human race is an eminently reasonable policy. If you are freezing then it is your duty to go ahead and die, preferably taking your neighbors with you somehow.
Scent of Shale Gas Hangs Over Katyn
************************EXCERPT INTRO******************************
Moscow Times ^ | 14 April 2010 | Yulia Latynina
Posted on Wed 14 Apr 2010 03:43:41 AM PST by theanchoragedailyruse
Then it all ended unexpectedly, as if on cue. Putin traveled last week to Katyn along with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
What caused such a dramatic shift?
The Wall Street Journal on April 8 reveals the answer. According to the article, “U.S. [energy] giants will start drilling for shale gas in Poland within the next few weeks.”
There’s your answer. All of Russia’s neo-imperialism has been built upon the fact that it has “peaceful gas”...........
A bit of hyperbole by the author but all in all, an accurate article. Shale gas will likely put the whammy on ethanol and make the US competitive again. The beauty of shale gas is, there’s so much of it, federal meddlers can’t keep it off limits, other than to impose pollution requirements, which is in law to cover coal and oil extraction.
They worship Mother Earth and the goddess Ghai (sp). We are parasites to be cleansed from Mother Earth. Sick people, er, I mean parasites.
...and we captured and or killed the head of Al qeda in Iraq .
Again.
Code Pink and the left want the US in the ME and will never allow any of this to be accessed.
I'm sitting on the Barnett, myself. Check out what's happening in Dish, Texas. Folks there are being exposed to 107 times the recommended limit of short-term exposure for known cancer-causing agents. It's showing up in their blood, urine, air, etc., and it's starting to make folks sick.
The hydrocarbons released during the fracking process do not "float harmlessly" out into the atmosphere. We're already on the borderline for ground-level ozone, and this is contributing to it substantially (over 50X what an average business would put out in toxins and pollutants).
Believe me, I am no tree hugger, but I am raising 3 little Texans. And I have dealt with the landmen up close and personal. They make politicians looks like saints. Unless you are sitting on multiple acres and have a well situated on your property, the royalty check might be enough to cover the average DFW water bill.
Like anything else, it's "buyer beware." No one knows what the long term effects are going to be on our land, home values, the health of our kids. There are over 3,000 wells permitted within the last two years. The gas isn't going anywhere; another year or so to watch how things unfold in Dish, Texas, may be the guiding force behind oil/gas permitting for the rest of the Metroplex.
We can learn from other's mistakes, without having to pay the price ourselves.
Dig, my friend, there is lots of solid information out there...enough to at least make you say "hmmmm". And a year of patience may be, in hindsight, a very wise course of action.
How deep is the formation where the pay zone is?
How true is this article, agenda aside?
If true, the mullahs better get some sand recipes
Don't have access to the seismological tests (can find them, I'm sure) but they are snapping up huge tracts and plunking down wells on every open parcel of land. They are pushing variances like crazy just to get in on small plots for wells. There are at least 8 within 2 arial miles of me.
There's a drop off along the Grand Prairie line (border of Dallas/Tarrant County), not much activity there. But anything west of 360 all the way up past Denton is hunting season (even using Chapter 37 exemptions to complete pools).
They were looking to put a major compression station in around Flower Mound. New Mayor, City Manager put a moratorium on it until the new Council gets up and running.
I've been told we are sitting on a sweet spot. TX RR Commission shows mutliple well heads coming off those already permitted.
I meant multiple drill paths coming off the well.
One to the South was permitted with 5 drill paths.
Bump!
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