Submitted by: Donald Hank
| Written by Matt Ridley | |||
| Tuesday, 09 July 2013 | |||
Exciting as Britain's latest shale gas estimate is - 47 years' supply or more - it pales beside what is happening in the United States. In the US shale gas is old hat; it's the shale oil revolution that's proving a world changer, promising not just lower oil prices worldwide, but geopolitical ripples as America weans itself off oil imports and perhaps loses interest in the Middle East. One of the pioneers of the shale gas revolution, Chris Wright, of Liberty Resources, was in Britain last month. It was he and his colleagues at Pinnacle Technologies who reinvented hydraulic fracturing in the late 1990s in a way that unlocked the vast petroleum resources in shale. Within seven years the Barnett shale, in and around Forth Worth, Texas, was producing half as much gas as the whole of Britain consumes. And the Barnett proved to be a baby compared with other shales. |
