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The shale itself has trapped it because of its lack of porosity. It's hard to drill a dry hole because these shales are like a blanket covering a span of hundreds of miles.

Dog Gone defined the Bakken shale play, and all the current "red hot shale plays" quite succintcly in his comment above. High commodity prices, new (expensive) horizontal drilling technology, innovative frac techniques and constantly improving 3D seismic have all come together at the right time to open several new Shale Plays.

The over-hyped Barnett (IMHO), Fayetteville and Marcellus shale plays are all legitimate huge finds in natural gas, that have not even begun to deliver anywhere near their capacity, and their are others such as Floyd, Conasauga, New Albany, Palo Dura, W.TX Barnett that all hold great promise.

I've seen some mind-numbing numbers recently in the Barnett central on production and lease sales that make me believe it is somewhat over-hyped, but I'm just a dumb ol'landman.

I'm not at all surprised at the Bakken finally making the numbers I've been hearing for over 20 years, but the 200-500 BILLION barrels of projected reserves seem a bit optimistic.

The only real question to overall price relief for consumers is whether we can drill these finds fast enough to keep pace with demand. Then again, if commodity prices crater, you will see a similar drop off in rig usage because the high cost of drilling these wells cannot be supported with $3.00 per mcf gas and $50 crude. It's a vicious world out there but we be a tryin' our best to bring it to market.

The truth is that high oil and gas prices encourage the oil and gas companies to find new and different ways to find the oil and gas.

There are many Freepers who think that the high prices are are the result of some conspiracy to keep supply off the market. That couldn’t be more false.

Any oil company wouldn’t care if the others curtailed production or drilling activity, but the simple fact is that each is highly motivated to find and produce as much at these price levels as they can possibly afford.

I don’t know how many booms and busts in the industry that I’ve endured. Probably at least ten. Right now is a boom. Maybe something has fundamentally changed with the awakening of China and India and the increased demand for energy, but I haven’t seen a boom that didn’t with a bust yet.