Thank You

If leaks can be controlled (and fracking issues solved), NG is a helpful step away from coal. It installs fairly fast and is dispatchable.

It’s not a solution, but it is better than sticking with coal. And as more wind and solar comes on line gas turbines will be used less. Generation methods which have no fuel cost can sell their power for less than methods which have to purchase fuel.

That, and more CO2/methane in the atmosphere is going to cook my butt.

I suspect Europe is going to be less pro-NG than is the US.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9311365/Bribe-residents-to-accept-wind-turbines-says-Tim-Yeo-MP.html

Knowhow and Equipment – Equipment easliy imported, know how already here: the North Sea means there is a wealth of expertise in Norway, the UK, Holland and Denmark (Denmark, and not Texas, is where multi stage hydraulic fracturing of long horizontal wells was invented… the guys in Texas then applied the technique to the Barnet Shale and the Shale Gas revolution started).

Regulations – the North Sea oil industry has worked quite happily under much stricter regulations than the US offshore industry for decades. And the US government is now (quietly) applying the same kind of regualtions to the US: they’ve already split the production and the safety governance into two (just like the UK and Norway does), expect to see a goal and risk based safety regime soon and independent checks on well designs (just like in Norway and the UK since the late 1980s). ther eal question for the USA is why did you tolerate higher fatality rates, injury rates and well control incident rates than the Uk, Norway and Brazil for so long? Why did it take it’s own disaster for the USA to bother about doing anything about it’s piss-poor offshore HSE record? Why not learn from the Norwegian disaster (the Alexander Kjelland) or the UK disaster (the Piper Alpha)?

Europe has a vast network of gas pipelines at high, medium and low pressures, in fact a better network of such pipelines than the US (that’s how gas from Norway, Algeria, Holland the UK and Russia arrives in my house in Spain). On a country by country basis, some countries don’t have the open access rights (but they tend not to be the countries with high gas demand).

unconventional gas is happening and will happen in Europe- the only barriers are the nature of resource ownership (the state owns it, so what benefit is ther to the local community or landowner?) and the fear of the unknown (“arrrgh! frac’cing is going to make me grow another head!”)

“The old continent has nearly as much technically recoverable shale gas (natural gas trapped in shale formations) as America. Europe’s reserves are 639 trillion cubic feet, compared with America’s 862, according to America’s Energy Information Administration, a government agency. But technically recoverable does not mean economically recoverable, notes Peter Hughes of Ricardo Strategic Consulting.

Costs are higher in Europe, for several reasons. First, European geology is less favourable: its shale deposits tend to be deeper underground and harder to extract.

Second, America has a long history of drilling for oil and gas, which has spawned a huge and competitive oil-services industry bristling with equipment and know-how. Europe has nothing to compare with that. In 2008, at the height of the gas boom in America, 1,600 rigs were in operation. In Europe now there are only 100. America’s more cut-throat market drives costs down. A single gas well in Europe might cost as much as $14m to sink, three-and-a-half times more than an American one, estimates Deutsche Bank.

Third, America’s gas industry faces fewer and friendlier regulations than Europe’s. Call it the Dick Cheney effect. And fourth, in America wildcat drillers, if they strike it rich, enjoy access to a spider’s web of existing pipelines, so they can get their gas to market. Europe has no such network nor open-access rules.”

http://www.economist.com/node/21540256

Costs – costs could be considerably higher and still attractive.

Know-how and equipment – that’s easily imported.

Regulations – those can be changed. This article is about government assistance for the NG industry, is it not?

While I tend to avoid calling out big media for specific failures in energy coverage, I may just start doing so more out of frustration and spurred on by the wonderful points you make here. We don’t have a ton of power, but should use what we can.

Europe is heavily dependent on Russian gas since it doesn’t have NG resources. This stupid behaviour will only increase the expenditure on Russian gas and increases the EU trade deficit towards Russia.

I just cannot imagine how any responsible, non-corrupt European polititian could come to this conclusion.

http://asbarez.com/103386/nabucco-pipeline-might-be-abandoned-by-june/

However, the broad support that seems to be in the making will only increase gas consumption, thereby negating all the advantages of exploring our own energy sources. Now that is really, really stupid. From an environmental and a political and an economical perspective.

And finally no word in this article, nor that of the Guardian about the real kicker here: methane leakage. Methane is a 25x more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, and the leakage could easily undo most if not all the benefits of lower CO2 emissions.