Shale Gas In Today’s Context

While it's no secret that the popular media and the energy industry don't always agree, a particularly radical split occurred approximately six years ago on the subject of natural gas.

The popular media foresaw an imminent gas shortage, a price increase of nearly 50 percent in a single year, with worse to come. They saw interrupted supply in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They bemoaned the slow pace of liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities coming onstream. And they saw gas as yet another area of US dependence on foreign energy.

At the same time, the energy industry press were enthusiastically publicizing the growing potential of shale gas. They were tracking discoveries and inventory growth, chronicling foreign investment in US reserves and service company expertise, and celebrating a spiraling rig count and signaling the pipeline industry's next boom. And they were raising the possibility of natural gas as an export product. All these predictions have