Posted on 08/04/2014 5:51:58 PM PDT by Lorianne
On the one hand, many environmental and conservation groups are bitterly opposed to shale development. Ranged against them are those within and beyond the energy industry who believe that the exploitation of shale gas can prove not only vital but hugely positive for the British economy.
Rather oddly, hardly anyone seems to have asked the one question which is surely fundamental: does shale development make economic sense?
My conclusion is that it does not.
That Britain needs new energy sources is surely beyond dispute. Between 2003 and 2013, domestic production of oil and gas slumped by 62pc and 65pc respectively, while coal output decreased by 55pc. Despite sharp increases in the output of renewables, overall energy production has fallen by more than half. A net exporter of energy as recently as 2003, Britain now buys almost half of its energy from abroad, and this gap seems certain to widen.
The example held up by the pro-fracking lobby is, of course, the United States, where fracking has produced so much gas that the market has been oversupplied, forcing gas prices sharply downwards.
The trouble with this parallel is that it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the US shale story.
We now have more than enough data to know what has really happened in America. Shale has been hyped ("Saudi America") and investors have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the shale sector. If you invest this much, you get a lot of wells, even though shale wells cost about twice as much as ordinary ones.
If a huge number of wells come on stream in a short time, you get a lot of initial production. This is exactly what has happened in the US.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Unlike the majority of the DOT.COM businesses; Shale gas is an actual product that is acquired through the exploration process of drilling wells and not vaporware.
For me that is a BIG difference between the two.
Spot on, Vet...
Malarkey alert!
I sometimes wonder if England is gonna make it.
Global commodity, toilet mouths
He made a dystopian prediction and he’ll be damned if anyone stops it from happening.
How could anyone stop it from happening?
It will either turn out to be true or not true.
As my father used to say, some people just can’t stand prosperity.
Its okay Eurotwits. Keep building windymills and solar.
And you can get your real energy from the US or you can be slaves to the USSR, er Russia.
This is a bullsh!t comparison.
Obviously, this maroon does not understand what the ‘dot com bubble’ was really all about. The ridiculous notion that anyone could through together vaporware and promises of grandiosity based on no product and no ideas is what caused the ‘dot com bubble’. The failure of companies that had nothing to offer is what always happens in a market economy. Giving fancy names to things that don’t exist and that people neither need nor want guarantees you won’t be around five years from now.
On the other hand shale, like so many in the hardware business, is a product that will still be around years from now.The only question will be whether or not it is economical to produce it.
precisely
OK let us please sell you some of our clean burning fracking gas from Texas. The LNG tankers are revving up. How does $14 an mcf sound? Normal?
I live in the midst of the Barnett shale, the very first shale gas play in the U.S.
And I have no idea what he's referring to. It's certainly not the case around here...
There will always be windmills....
Just don’t count on them when the wind dies down.
It would seem that shale oil should be in the news. It’s not likely that shale oil is breaking even, while WTI crude is less than $99 per barrel.
Go ahead Europe, leave it in the ground and make yourselves a customer of ours. While we gear up our LNG facilities, Putin will have his way with you.
The Telegraph and the UK Conservative Party have become what Margaret Thatcher referred to as "wets".
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