Beyond Fracking

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2014

Extraction of natural gas from shale rock in the United States (US) is one of the landmark events in the 21st century. The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing can extract huge quantities of natural gas from impermeable shale formations, which were previously thought to be either impossible or uneconomic to produce. This review offers a comprehensive insight into US shale gas opportunities, appraising the evolution, evidence and the challenges of shale gas production in the US. The history of US shale gas in this article is divided into three periods and based on the change of oil price (i.e., the period before the 1970s oil crisis, the period from 1970s to 2000, and the period since 2000), the US has moved from being one of the world's biggest importers of gas to being self-sufficient in less than a decade, with the shale gas production increasing 12-fold (from 2000 to 2010). The US domestic natural gas price hit a 10-year low in 2012. The US domestic natural gas price in the first half of 2012 was about $2 per million British Thermal Unit (BTU), compared with Brent crude, the world benchmark price for oil, now about $ 80-100/barrel, or $14-17 per million BTU. Partly due to an increase in gas-fired power generation in response to low gas prices, US carbon emissions from fossil-fuel combustion fell by 430 million ton CO 2more than any other countrybetween 2006 and 2011. Shale gas also stimulated economic growth, creating 600,000 new jobs in the US by 2010. However, the US shale gas revolution would be curbed, if the environmental risks posed by hydraulic fracturing are not managed effectively. The hydraulic fracturing is water intensive, and can cause pollution in the marine environment, with implications for long-term environmental sustainability in several ways. Also, large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, can be emitted during the shale gas exploration and production. Hydraulic fracturing also may induce earthquakes. These environmental risks need to be managed by good practices which is not being applied by all the producers in all the locations. Enforcing stronger regulations are necessary to minimize risk to the environment and on human health. Robust regulatory oversight can however increase the cost of extraction, but stringent regulations can foster an historic opportunity to provide cheaper and cleaner gas to meet the consumer demand, as well as to usher in the future growth of the industry.

The Energy Journal, 1997

We review the theoretical underpinnings of the exponential model, the amount of gas discovered per unit eflort, a quantity called yield-per-eflort (YPE), and estimate an econometric model that represents the historical determinants of the YPE for nonassociated gas discoveries in the lower 48 states from 1943 to 1991, the entire period for which the requisite data are available. Results indicate the YPE declines as the exponential function of cumulative drilling when short run changes in drilling effort, real gqs prices, and sht@ between onshore and offshore are accounted for. We explicitly test and reject the hypothesis that technological change has arrested or reversed the long run decline in YPE. We also discuss some alternative models of YPE that misrepresent the interplay of depletion and technical innovation, as well as the process of innovation itself, and the statistical and methodological shortcomings of the empirical analyses used to support several alternative models of YPE.

2017

Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, 2012

As populations and economies continue to grow globally, energy demand will grow proportionally. Extensive work by Tertzakian (2007, 2009) has shown crude-oil supplies may not keep pace with this increased demand. The shortfall must be met by other energy sources. Only two current energy sources have the global capacity to, by themselves, address increased energy demand in a timely manner. These are natural gas and coal. Traditionally, the major use of crude oil has been for processing into transportation fuels, with lesser amounts being used for petrochemicals and home heating. Natural gas and coal have been used primarily for electrical generation and heating. A pivotal transition will likely occur in which natural gas and coal begin to see increased use as transportation fuels. A battle for market share between primary fuels will likely ensue. The objective of this paper is to present data comparing the environmental impact of using methane vs. coal. A compelling case for the use of natural gas as the future "green fuel" emerges. SWOT Analysis A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis was undertaken to gain a more complete understanding of the current Canadian natural-gas market. Strengths Western Canadian Natural-Gas Potential. Recent discoveries in the Horn River basin and the Montney play are expected to approximtely triple British Columbia natural-gas production from ≈2.8 B/D currently to ≈7.6 B/D within approximately the next 10 years. The natural-gas resource base in British Columbia is expected to be on the scale of other major liquefi ed-natural-gas (LNG)-producing nations (e.g., Indonesia and Australia). All of the major Canadian exploration companies, together with several of the super majors and some independents, are developing natural gas in the Montney and Horn River shale plays (Figs. 1 and 2). This added resource has been unlocked primarily through use of horizontal drilling combined with multistage-fracturing treatments. This has allowed these nanodarcy-permeability formations to be produced at economic rates. Improvements in the efficiency of technologies used to conduct the fracturing treatments now routinely allow for eight to 10 major fracturing treatments to be placed in 2 to 3 days using 24-hour operations (Fig. 3). Multiple transverse fractures are created along a horizontal lateral wellbore to provide the necessary exposed rock surface area (kh) for economic drainage rates (Fig. 4). Tertzakian captures the potential that shale gas provides in his book The End of Energy Obesity (Tertzakian 2009): "To meet growing appetites around the world and address the need to shift to a healthier energy diet with the greatest leverage possible, we need to identify a fuel that is low carb, plentiful, scalable, and affordable. As fate would have it, we are fortunate that such a fuel is emerging and is already being added to our diet in greater proportion, especially in North America. Actually, it's an old fuel, but we are finding new ways to accessing and using it. We used to call it 'nature's gas'."

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Although natural gas has been obtained from organic-rich shales in the United States since the first commercial gas well was produced in 1821 to provide gas light to four commercial establishments and a mill in the small town of Fredonia, New York, large-scale shale gas production is a recent phenomenon. Assessments of the geological and engineering challenges of shale gas resources were performed in the 1970s and 1980s, as new domestic energy sources were sought in response to an oil embargo imposed upon the United States, and the resulting "energy crisis" that followed. The amount of natural gas present in the shales was found to be significant, but commercial production had to await advances in drilling and completion technology that came about in the 1990s. The new technology allowed for the economic development of this resource in the 21 st Century. 1.1 Basic shale geology Shale is the name for a class of sedimentary rocks. The term shale refers to a rock that is composed primarily of tiny grains of clay minerals and quartz, the mineral components of mud. These materials were deposited as sediment in water, which was then buried, compacted by the weight of overlying sediment, and cemented together to form a rock through a process called lithification. Clay minerals are a type of sheet silicate related to mica that usually occurs in the form of thin plates or flakes. As the sediment was deposited, the flakes of clay tended to stack together flat, one on top of another like a deck of cards, and as a result, lithified shale often has the property of splitting into paper-thin sheets. This is called fissility, and it is an easy way to identify shale from other fine-grained rocks like limestone or siltstone. Because the grains of material that make up shale are so small, pore spaces between these grains are equally small. Although shale can have porosity in the range of ten percent, the pores and flowpaths are so tiny that it is difficult for any fluids in the pores, like gas, oil or water, to flow out of the rock. Cracks or fractures are needed to for flowpaths. Shale comes in two general varieties based on organic content: dark or light. Dark colored or black shales are organic-rich, whereas the lighter colored shales are organic-lean. Organicrich shales were deposited under conditions of little or no oxygen in the water, which preserved the organic material from decay. The organic matter was mostly plant debris that had accumulated with the sediment. As these materials were buried deeply beneath www.intechopen.com Advances in Natural Gas Technology 4 younger sediments and subjected to intense heat and pressure over geologic time periods, they became hydrocarbons, or what we know as oil, gas and coal. A location with a good exposure of rock that is representative of the formation as a whole is called the "type section," and formation names are assigned by geologists after a nearby geographic feature.

The shale gas revolution, which is based on huge shale gas reserves and the continuing and cumulative advance of technologies and experience, is by now a familiar feature of the U.S. energy sector. In Europe, a number of countries — notably Poland — have shown signs of an active commitment to the development of shale gas and its related industries. U.S. and Europe have been one step ahead of shale gas development based on technological advances and active exploitation and production of shale gas. On the other hand, as latecomers of shale gas development, Asian countries have focused on financial investment and technological advancement as their main strategy for shale gas development. This study analyzes that environmental issues from extraction of shale gas are main controversies in Asian countries. Can Shale Gas Be the Alternative? 87 [

Fuel, 1974

‘Shale Gas and Energy Security’ (Chapter 7) [In:] T. Hunter (ed) Handbook of Shale Gas Law and Policy, Cambridge: Intersentia, 2016., 2016

Energy security has traditionally been built around three factors: security of supply; price and environmental sustainability. Traditionally linked to crude oil, with change of consumption patterns, rise of geopolitical factors and long-term challenges of climate change, energy security can be seen as a 'healthy' balance of energy mix that developed economies are increasingly longing for. Globally, natural gas is an emerging fuel the economics of which is still largely dependent on trade in crude oil and petroleum products. The link between oil and gas dates to the early days of conventional oil production where gas was a by-product of crude exploration flared on the spot to access the black gold underground. The unique link established a basis for pricing and trading natural gas as a fuel indexed to crude oil and its derivatives. While it is still flared in some remote production regions, for affordability and environmental reasons natural gas is becoming increasingly too precious to be left behind. In particular, environmental concerns, particularly the move towards having a lower carbon footprint and the applicability of natural gas as an affordable source to fuel industry and provide energy and heating source to households, have all caused natural gas to often be described as a fuel of choice, a term that reconciles interests of businesses, the energy industry and communities. While production of natural gas from conventional geology continues, technological and geological progress is now changing the 'old' way of thinking about gas and energy security by adding shale gas to the equation. Despite its trading structure being by all means not yet global and largely confined to regional and international markets in search for demand, shale gas has already managed to change perceptions of the geopolitics of energy security globally. Due to the rise of new technologies of extraction, gas is often presented as a bridging fuel between the 'traditional' high-carbon energy carriers such s coal and crude oil and the future, where low-carbon energy sources, in particular renewable energy, will become more prevalent.

Natural Gas, 2007

ear-term projections by gas industry re-N search and trade organizations' indicate that natural gas consumption (supplied primarily by drilling in the lower 48 states) could increase by as much as 33 percent. Such an increase would raise consumption from the current 21 trillion cubic feet annually to more than 28 trillion cubic feet annually by the year 2015. This increase would give natural gas a 26percent share of U.S. total energy usage. Gas to meet this supply challenge will be produced both from current proved reserves of 164 trillion cubic feet2 and from the remaining potential resource base of 1,028 trillion cubic feet.3 John B. Curtis and Stephen D. Schwochow. .. 28 trillion cubic feet annually by the year 2015. Three regions-Gulf Coast, Mid-Continent, and Rocky Mountain-undoubtedly will provide the bulk of future domestic gas supply. Potential Gas Committee (PGC) findings illustrate that the amount of gas required indeed exists and is believed to be technically recoverable from each of these regions. New pipelines, expansions, and added capacity will help move more of this gas to more distant markets. However, in fully meeting these expectations, producers face several obstacles-in particular, gas imports from Canada and disparities in gas prices. Price differentials, arising from excess