Risks and Potentials of the Shale Gas Revolution: Consequences for Markets and the Environment

Abstract:

The shale gas revolution, which until now has been mainly a North American phenomenon, is poised to go global. Geologists have long known about large quantities of methane trapped in shale rock, but it took favorable price signals and technological innovations to make it feasible to get shale gas out of the ground.

Are European business elites and policy makers ready for these developments? What can be learned from the North American experience? If regulators allow it – and most importantly if industry finds it lucrative enough to pursue it in places such as Poland and Ukraine – the use of hydraulic fracturing as a technique for extracting natural gas from gas shale will carry with it consequences for the environment, the marketplace, and energy security, but the magnitude of those consequences is uncertain.