Interesting news — according to this BBC article, the most recent British Geological Survey indicates that there may be twice the shale gas deposits in the UK that were previously anticipated. Such a large potential source of natural gas has substantial implications: “If the estimates are proved correct, that would still suggest recoverable reserves of …
Lynne Kiesling As Megan McArdle noted on Wednesday, fracking in the US is causing dissension within OPEC; couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of cartel members. Megan’s analysis is dead on, well worth reading, and reveals how different the ideal strategies are of the different OPEC members. At some level, this is not new — …
Lynne Kiesling Ken Silverstein has a good article in Forbes on the business prospects for shale gas developers (and I’m glad to see him there, having followed his work for a very long time). Since he asks in the title whether low shale gas prices are a mirage, I think it’s useful to go through …
Shale Gas Glut, but Won’t Last? The Underlying Model Read More »
Michael Giberson In the State of the Union address, President Obama invoked a little federal government research history and then jumped to the kind of logical non sequitur so common to those who see the world through politically-colored glasses: The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner …
Was Federal Government Support Critical to the Shale Gas Breakthrough? Read More »
Michael Giberson In the Washington Post the folks at the Breakthrough Institute try to learn us some history about the shale gas boom. Maybe you think the shale gas boom was some big surprise suddenly made real after the decades-long work of a hard-headed oil and gas guy – George Mitchell – willing to spend …
Did the Federal Government Invent the Shale Gas Boom? Read More »
Michael Giberson Paul M. Barrett, for Bloomberg, has written up a pretty good introduction to natural gas from shale. The article delves a bit into the history and geology of the subject, but focuses more on the business efforts that turned a modestly interesting rock into a significant economic resource and the environmental politics that …
Michael Giberson Yesterday, August 14, 2011, was the ten-year anniversary of the announcement by Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy of its intention to acquire Houston-based Mitchell Energy and Development for $3.5 billion. The prime target of interest lay about halfway between the two company headquarters, in the Barnett Shale surrounding Fort Worth, Texas. Mitchell had figured …
Devon Energy’s Bet on Barnett Shale, Made 10 Years Ago, Has Paid off Read More »
Michael Giberson While I was vacationing in New Mexico and Arizona, New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane continued his analysis of the pair of late June articles in the newspaper that suggested widespread insider skepticism over the size and significance of recent shale gas developments. A June 26 story suggested the presence of significant …
Michael Giberson As mentioned here a few weeks ago, links below, the pair of New York Times articles giving voice to shale gas skeptics were badly done. (I called them no more than “an impressive collection of shale skeptic sound bites.”) I was far from the only critic, and the paper itself received a lot …
NYT Editor on Shale Gas Skeptic Article: We Should Have Done Better Read More »
Michael Giberson After following the reactions to the New York Times stories on shale gas skepticism for a day or two, I began to get tired of all of the complaints (“pretty poor quality,” “sensationalistic … false,” “poorly done piece of work,” “mislead its readers,” “approaching yellow journalism“) and so started searching for supportive reactions, …
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