I've always taken the position that peak oil is a secondary concern. But it should me noted that aside from the water problems noted, shale gas is more expensive to produce than conventional natural gas, and that part of that additional cost is more energy input - so that it has lower net energy. Since the lower net energy shale gas is cheaper to produce, we can expect the cost of producing shale gas to rise gradually, and the net energy to fall.
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > New York Times > October 10, 2009 > > New Way to Tap Gas May Expand Global Supplies > > By CLIFFORD KRAUSS > > OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies > of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, > raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil > fuel. > > Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, > Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black > rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe > for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing > Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields. > > The global drilling rush is still in its early stages. But energy analysts > are already predicting that shale could reduce Europe’s dependence on > Russian natural gas. They said they believed that gas reserves in many > countries could increase over the next two decades, comparable with the 40 > percent increase in the United States in recent years. > > “It’s a breakout play that is going to identify gigantic resources around > the world,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University. “That > will change the geopolitics of natural gas.” > > <snip > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
