An End to the Energy Crisis?

Everyone knows that the world is facing an energy crisis. Or is it?
While conventional wisdom has always asserted that our energy reserves are rapidly being depleted, new innovations in the extraction of natural gas from shale tell a different story. In fact, our ability to use shale for natural gas has increased the world's gas supply by at least sixty years worth. This innovative new extraction process may also help the United States and Europe progress on the path to energy self sufficiency.

Using Shale for Natural Gas

It may not be a simple process, but thanks to technological advances, natural gas can be extracted from shale beneath the earth's surface. Through a process known as hydraulic fracturing, a mixture of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into the earth under high pressure, forcing the shale reserves within to fracture. This then causes the natural gas that is released to flow into a previously attached wellbore, where pipelines carry the gas to the pipeline network.

So What's the Hold Up?

It sounds simple enough, but there are still a few environmental obstacles to overcome before this method is applied towards a total solution to the energy crisis. Because the combination of materials pumped at the shale includes toxic chemicals and hydrochloric acid, concerns do remain that a possible accident could damage the surrounding environment. In fact, in one instance in Pennsylvania, Cabot and Oil gas supply was shut down after 8000 gallons of chemicals spilled into a nearby stream.

Solving the World's Energy Crisis

Still, extracting natural gas from shale supplies is an extremely attractive option for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, as our natural gas reserves are rapidly being depleted, shale could provide a much needed boost in supply. Another reason to use this extraction process: shale is abundant in the U.S. and Europe. Using local supplies for natural gas instead of importing the product from another country could decrease energy dependency on Russia and even the Middle East. Add to that an increase in the use of solar and wind power, and the switch to energy efficient and electric cars, and the United States may become entirely energy self sufficient at some point in the near future.

In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy expects that in only twenty years, half of the country's natural gas will be supplied by shale. That's no small accomplishment for a technology that only a few decades ago, didn't even appear on the list of solutions to the country's growing energy crisis.