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Posts in Shale Gas

The Hidden Danger of the Gas Boom
Andy Rowell
Feb08
The hype surrounding the US gas industry continues to grow as America moves ever closer to its cherished dream of energy independence. Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that “the U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo…
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Big Oil Threatens President Obama
Steve Kretzmann
Jan04
By Brendan Demelle, DeSmogBlog American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard today announced the oil and gas industry’s latest election-year scare campaign to threaten the demise of the U.S. economy unless Big Oil gets its every wish in Washington. This year the wish list includes approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, expanded offshore drilling on both…
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Shale Oil Jobs “Vastly Exaggerated”
Andy Rowell
Nov16
The headline in yesterday’s Financial Times said it all “Surge in shale oil output fuels US jobs bonanza”. According to the FT: “The boom in shale oil and gas production has created one bright spot in the otherwise grim US labour market.” “The rate of job growth is noteworthy,” Brian Davidson, an economist with the…
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“It’s a pie in the sky” number
Andy Rowell
Sep26
On Wednesday last week, the hype that has surrounding fracking in the US finally arrived in the UK. The energy firm Cuadrilla, which has been drilling wells in the North West of the country under Lancashire, announced a “huge find” of gas. Cuadrilla announced that that its tests showed there could be as much as…
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Will Europe Heed Warnings over Fracking?
Andy Rowell
Aug12
A recent report by the World Economic Forum on the future of the gas markets has highlighted the revolution that is currently happening in this sector. The report started by saying: “What a difference a few years can make in one of the world’s major energy markets. Advances in the production of unconventional gas –…
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Shale Gas Investment is “Eye-Watering”
Andy Rowell
Jul18
The world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton has signalled it too wants to get in on the shale gas revolution sweeping the US, despite the growing controversy over fracking. In a deal announced late last week, BHP agreed to pay $12.1bn for Houston-based gas developer Petrohawk, with a view to spending nearly $50 billion developing…
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Houston “I think we have a big problem”
Andy Rowell
Jun27
As I have often written about in the past, the oil industry is all about risk and reward. At some stage it has to lure large scale investors to bet large amounts of money that it has found large reserves of oil gas than can be readily exploited. It is an industry that is often…
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Gas is No “Panacea” For Climate Change
Andy Rowell
Jun07
As the old saying goes “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck.” And if it smells like a fossil fuel and is produced by the fossil fuel industry, then it probably is a fossil fuel. So despite the best efforts by the oil…
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Fracking “Causing Earthquakes”
Andy Rowell
Jun01
For an industry that prides itself on precision engineering and drilling, fracking is a brutal technique with unforeseen consequences. The oil industry is trying to argue that fracking which exploits shale gas is a “game changer” that will guarantee energy security for years to come. But the industry already faces growing public opposition due to…
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Dash for Shale Gas Undermines Wind
Andy Rowell
May23
The last time that America’s pro-wind lobby came together for its regular get-together was in California in 2007. That time there were 5,000 attendees and the installed wind capacity in the US was 17 gigawatts. Four years later and on the surface it is a success story for America’s pro-wind lobby. Yesterday saw the opening…
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