Financial Times: Fracking could lead to golden age of gas

THE WORLD is in the midst of a natural gas revolution. Even the sober International Energy Agency refers to a scenario it calls a “golden age of gas”. If such optimism proves right, the implications would not only be far greater than those of the euro zone’s painful dissolution, but would also be economically positive.

Never forget that ours is a civilisation built on cheap supplies of commercial energy. The economic rise of emerging countries is bound to make the demand for commercial energy increase dramatically in the decades ahead. Gas matters.  This revolution has a name: hydraulic fracturing, colloquially known as hydrofracking or just fracking.

As is true of nearly all of the technological revolutions of the past century, this one also originated in the United States. The US Energy Information Administration explains that “the use of horizontal drilling in conjunction with hydraulic fracturing has greatly expanded the ability of producers to produce natural gas from low permeability geologic formations, particularly shale formations”.  MORE