CNBC: US-China shale gas rivalry bad news for poor countries
China's plans to establish a shale industry to rival the U.S.'s could see Beijing slash its energy imports—in a blow for some of the world's poorest gas exporters.
Shale gas is drilled out of rocks in a process known as fracking or hydraulic fracturing, and has been hailed as revolutionary way of getting cheap energy by some.
However, the U.S. is currently the only country to have fully embraced fracking. Its shale gas production increased to 291.6 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2012, up from 56.6 bcm in 2007—a shift from 8 percent to 35 percent of the U.S.'s total natural gas production.
China's own shale gas industry is currently extremely small, but its government hopes to emulate the U.S.'s success by upping production to 6.5 bcm by 2015 and 60-to-100 bcm by 2020.