The Anonymous Widower

Fracking May be Good for You

There is a great deal of opposition to the use of fracking to extract gas from shale in this country.

I went to a lecture at the Royal Geograhical Society yesterday called Unconventional Gas.  It was very enlightening and I can draw various conclusions from the lecture. You can find out more about the lecture here.

The first is that there is a very large amount of gas available to be extracted using fracking and a lot of it is in countries, with pretty stable regimes, like Australia, Canada and the United States.

The second is that gas prices in North America are falling fast, because of the large amounts of gas now available. I believe, that Canada has far too much gas for its own use and will soon start to export.

So it is not inconceivable, that Europe will start to import gas from North America rather than from regimes like Russia and Qatar.

Am I wrong to therefore suggest that because of fracking, we may well find that our gas prices start to drop?

I have deliberately not discussed the use of fracking in the UK and Europe.

The technologies employed are still very much under development and have been used mainly in the very underpopulated parts of the United States and Canada.  The extraction is now moving towards more populous states, like Pennsylvania, and only when it is totally accepted by the inhabitants there, will it be time to use it in Europe.

In the meantime we should keep a strong watching brief, investing in resarch in the best universities, as I outlined here.

But as with many things, there are many against the technology, when it starts to be used, but now it is totally accepted.  Just look at the opposition Brunel, Stephenson and others had when they started building railways!

May 10, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | News | Australia, Canada, Fracking, Natural Gas, Oil, Technology, United States