Shale gas represents a major fraction of the proven reserves of natural gas in the United States and a collection of other countries. Higher gas prices and the need for cleaner fuels provides motivation for commercializing shale gas deposits even though the cost is substantially higher than traditional gas deposits. Recent advances in horizontal drilling and multistage hydraulic fracturing, whi...

Previous economic analyses focused on relationships between crude oil and natural gas markets centered primarily on demand-side considerations. We provide evidence that two important supply-side connections play important roles in understanding crude oil and natural gas market integration. First, crude oil production and natural gas production require a common capital input: rotary drilling rig...

Natural gas extraction is experiencing what has been called a quiet revolution. The industry historically viewed natural gas as trapped in reservoirs, where it collects over thousands of years after exiting source rock. Though hard to find, the reservoirs easily give up large amounts of their holdings when penetrated by drilling. But what if natural gas could be extracted directly from source r...

In the early 2000s US gas production was in slow but steady decline despite increasing drilling activity. As US natural gas prices rose in response to the resulting tight market, the only supply-side solution appeared to lie in the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in the Middle East and Africa for importation to the North American market. Almost unnoticed in its early stages,...

a r t i c l e i n f o The use of high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has increased substantially over the past five years in the United States. Use of this drilling technology to extract natural gas from hitherto impermeable shale is expected to increase even more in coming decades. Two institutions, integration contracts and well spacing requirements, evolved to mitigate the...

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org N gas drilling has dramatically expanded with advances in extraction technology and the need for cleaner burning fuels that will help meet global energy demands. Natural gas is considered a “bridge fuel” to renewable energy resources because its combustion releases fewer contaminants (eg carbon dioxide [CO2], nitrogen oxide [NOx], s...

Although Osborn et al. (1) provided important geochemical measurements of dissolved methane in a portion of the Appalachian basin, their report does not fully appreciate the geologic history of this region and misrepresents potential risks of modern drilling and completion techniques used to develop shale-gas resources. The fear that hydraulic fracturing is responsible for methane migration fro...