[Peakoil] US Shale Gas and the World Energy Power Balance

[Jenny Goldie]

[I post this despite it not being about oil per se, but gas can be an alternative transport fuel so is relevant to the issue of peak oil. I personally dispute the optimism of the article but, you never know, they may turn out to be right. Jenny]

US Shale Gas and the World Energy Power Balance
Rising U.S. natural gas production from shale formations has already played a critical role in weakening Russia's ability to wield an "energy weapon" over its European customers, and this trend will accelerate in the coming decades, according to a new Baker Institute study, "Shale Gas and U.S. National Security." The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, projects that Russia's natural gas market share in Western Europe will decline to as little as 13 percent by 2040, down from 27 percent in 2009. The Baker Institute study dismisses the notion, recently debated in the U.S. media, that the shale gas revolution is a transitory occurrence. The study projects that U.S. shale production will more than quadruple by 2040 from 2010 levels of more than 10 billion cubic feet per day, reaching more than 50 percent of total U.S. natural gas production by the 2030s. The study incorporates independent scientific and economic literature on shale costs and resources, including assessments by organizations such as the U.S. Geological Survey, the Potential Gas Committee and scholarly peer-reviewed papers of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Oil shale, an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock, contains significant amounts of kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil and/or natural gas can be produced. Deposits of oil shale occur around the world, including major deposits in the United States of America.
http://www.enn.com/energy/article/42960