Europe: Shale Storm
An earthquake is winding up under the crust of European soil—not a conventional seismic one, but an energy temblor, with the potential to transform the Continent’s energy market and alter the strategic parameters of Russian-European relations.
The prospect of the commercialization of shale gas has already generated a high-stakes debate within the European Union about how fossil fuels, nuclear power, solar and renewables should factor in its energy mix. Adding an American dimension to the problem, Europe’s debate on energy security also affects Transatlantic relations because of shale gas’s potential to link U.S. and European energy sectors and influence the wider Euro-Atlantic debate on climate change, regulatory requirements, emissions and supply sources.
A silent global shale gas revolution has been underway since 2001, thanks to improvements in hydraulic fracturing technology, or “fracking”, which uses large amounts of compressed water, sand and a small amount of chemicals to free natural gas from its geophysical reservoirs. Over the past decade, U.S. energy companies have leveraged “fracking” to increase domestic unconventional gas production from 1 percent of all gas extracted in 2001 to over 20 percent today. By 2035, almost half of all U.S. natural gas output is projected to come from shale.
With shale deposits distributed generously worldwide, Europe is beginning to catch the trailing edge of this game-changing moment in global energy production. Today the European Union is engaged in a crucial debate over whether and how to tap into its own shale deposits, which contain more than 17.5 trillion cubic meters (and with the recent discovery of a new major deposit in the United Kingdom, possibly as much as 22 trillion).
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