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shale gas

Are Chesapeake's Problems A Red Flag For Shale Gas?

May 17, 2012 by Geoffrey Styles
with 486 views
14

David Gaylor /Shutterstock

Chesapeake Energy has been in the news a lot, lately, concerning both the significant challenges it faces in financing its ambitious development program, and its high-profile CEO, who was recently forced to relinquish his role as Chairman. The company's stock is trading for half its value one year ago and less than a fourth of its 2008 peak. [read more]

Why natural gas is the ‘atomic bomb’ of the energy debate

April 20, 2012 by Corbin Hiar
with 752 views
2

The growing role of natural gas in the U.S. energy mix continues to confound and divide renewable energy experts and investors. Is America's abundant supply of shale gas a boon for the renewable industry, or undercutting it? [read more]

Dash for shale gas will not help save the climate or lower prices

April 17, 2012 by David Thorpe
with 312 views
0

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for shale gas, is said to be seismically "safe" in the UK, but critics say it will impede us from meeting our greenhouse gas reduction targets and stall investment in renewables.  DECC has published an independent evaluation of the seismic risks from hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, which... [read more]

Have US Emissions Peaked?

April 11, 2012 by Breakthrough Institute
with 476 views
4

America's newfound abundance of natural gas is helping drive US CO2 missions down even as the economy recovers. This is principally the result of the ongoing transition from coal to natural gas in the electric power sector. [read more]

Could the Climate Change Act be used to curb new gas-fired plants?

March 27, 2012 by David Thorpe
with 196 views
0

DECC's decision to set EPCs at 450gCO2/kWh could be open to legal challenge. It is now fashionable to term natural gas a “transitional" fuel on the road to a low or zero carbon economy at some vague point in the fuzzy future. Just as many thought carbon capture and storage would be a “get out of jail free" card enabling business as... [read more]

Shale Gas Likely to Alter China's Energy Mix

March 7, 2012 by Geoffrey Styles
with 683 views
2

Two recent news stories highlight the significant shifts underway in China's energy sector, along with the global impact that is already apparent from these changes. Last week the Chinese government announced a new estimate for the country's potential resources of shale gas that is nearly double the Department of Energy's latest estimate... [read more]

Challenges and Opportunities for Argentine Shale Oil

February 29, 2012 by Elliott Gue
with 1,247 views
0

The US shale oil and gas revolution took many industry observers by surprise. Consider the sudden shift in fortunes of US companies that built liquefaction facilities to import natural gas. Earlier this decade most analysts projected that US imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) would increase steadily, offsetting lower domestic... [read more]

Wind Power In Trouble on Two Fronts

February 25, 2012 by Amy Myers Jaffe
with 1,024 views
0

Photo by Martin Abegglen via Flickr

Wind power is being squeezed on two fronts. Natural gas prices remain low, limiting the financial incentive to install wind capacity. Meanwhile, the Chinese government continues limit the supply of rare earth elements (REE), and the magnets required for wind turbines use sizable quantities of two of them, neodymium and dysprosium. Any... [read more]

Natural Gas Boom Won’t Stall U.S. Renewables

February 23, 2012 by Christina Nunez
with 438 views
1

The recent plummet of the natural gas spot price to a 28-month low has stirred discussion about implications for renewable energy—the majority electrical generating component in RMI’s vision of the 2050 U.S. energy economy. Since mid-2009, it has been increasingly clear that the amount of natural gas supplied via hydraulic... [read more]

Top Three Reasons Cheap Natural Gas Won’t Kill Renewable Energy

February 22, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 425 views
1

I’ll be the first to admit that cheap natural gas prices are one of the biggest short-term threats to deployment of renewable energy in the U.S. today. With a glut of gas dropping prices to historic lows, the competitiveness of technologies like wind, solar PV, and solar hot water are facing significant challenges. But here’s the... [read more]

The Future of American Shale Gas

February 8, 2012 by Adriaan Kamp
with 822 views
2

This article was inspired by the most recent State of the Union: America’s plan for an “all-out on local energy”- and the subsequent discussions in the industry on its implications, its opportunities and its challenges.I promised to give you my take on the present on-going market developments with shale gas as well as my predictions for... [read more]

Why the shale gas glut won’t last

January 31, 2012 by Michael Giberson
with 541 views
3

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 the underlying economic analysis that’s embedded in his... [read more]

Terry Engelder on the Federal Role in the Shale Gas Revolution

January 6, 2012 by Breakthrough Institute
with 277 views
0

As a part of the Breakthrough Institute's in-depth investigation of shale gas extraction and the role of the federal government in the development of many of the key enabling technologies, we interviewed Terry Engelder, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of Foreign Policy's 100 Global Thinkers. Dr. Engelder has authored... [read more]

Decades of Government Funding Behind Shale Revolution

December 21, 2011 by Michael Shellenberger
with 446 views
1

The technological revolution allowing for the cheap extraction of natural gas from shale occurred thanks to more than three decades of government subsidies for research, demonstration, and production, a new Breakthrough Institute investigation finds. Both directly and indirectly, the government was behind the critical moments and tools... [read more]

Did the Federal Government Invent the Shale Gas Boom?

December 20, 2011 by Michael Giberson
with 1,097 views
12

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 millions of dollars on the crazy idea that... [read more]