COLUMN: The coming natural gas economy

Early in my career, in one 10 well drilling program, I missed the target in the first seven wells and went to my manager to tell him he might want to get some additional help. He told me he had faith in me, to keep drilling and something good will happen. We hit the next three, then the next dozen and found several million barrels of new oil. I have faith in our oil and gas science and the U.S. industry has kept drilling and discovered a new shale gas supply that can provide clean energy fuel for the foreseeable future.

Geologists have long known that shale, an abundant rock type made of very small grains, often contained natural gas, but had almost no void space "permeability" to allow the gas to flow. Recent technology developments in horizontal drilling and reservoir stimulation by hydraulic fracturing now allow the gas available in shale to be produced. In developing shale fields in Texas, Montana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Dakota, Colorado and a dozen other states, enough gas has been discovered to potentially supply the majority of our energy needs for the next several decades. This is true for other countries as well such as China, Brazil and India. This is an enormous resource, with more gas yet to be discovered, that will change the energy mix of the country, change the global balance of energy and change our overall national and global energy future.

Early estimates, thought by many to be very conservative, calculate that the U.S. has enough gas in shale deposits to supply our energy needs for more than 50 years. This includes energy for heat and converting our cars, trucks and coal-fired power plants to use natural gas. Many experts believe we may have up to 100 years of natural gas available because the science and technology is rapidly discovering new clean methods for production. In either case natural gas from shale will become the dominant energy fuel source for the modern world. This is fortunate for several reasons.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel and fossil fuels provide half of all electricity generated and almost all of the fuel used for transportation. Natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel and is currently used in city buses and taxis, electric power plants and for heating water and buildings and cooking. It is used in many industrial processes and can be used for fuel cells. Natural gas is easily transported and can be shipped in pipelines or compressed in tanks and trucked. The technology, industry and know-how exist to use natural gas and will only improve. In fact, because there is such an expected growth in the amount of natural gas we have available from shale, new research programs are being created to find ways to use it. This is very exciting for a nation that is dependent for half of is transportation energy in the form of oil from foreign countries.

If all I have said is true then what are the problems with a wholesale shift to natural gas? There are two main issues, public perception and political motivation. Both are possibly related. Environmental groups opposed to shale gas accused drilling companies of damaging drinking water during the hydraulic fracturing process. This was highly improbable but very difficult to explain to the general public because of its technical complexity. Now, the DOE, EPA and companies are working together, public understanding and trust is growing, and the environmental issues are slowly being addressed or going away. Politically the new resource of shale gas poses a problem to the Obama administration's plan to shift away from fossil fuels towards a high percentage of renewables by the year 2050. The amount of shale gas discovered suggests that it will be the primary fuel well beyond this date. Additionally, government expenditures planned for renewable energy sources to help mitigate man-made global warming are hard to justify when such an abundance of clean-burning natural gas is available well into the future. Because of these issues, the Obama administration's political will to embrace shale gas as a major national energy source has been cool to lukewarm at best. Fortunately the major gas companies are moving ahead.

The rest of the world is taking notice and using the technology and science developed in the U.S. to find and develop the shale gas resource. We cannot afford to let the rest of the world develop this energy source and not do so ourselves especially when energy independence is the prize. Something good has happened.