Non-conventional Natural Gas

Vincent Kaminski

This article was first published as a chapter in Energy Markets on January 21, 2013, by Risk Books.

A few short years ago, the US energy industry was criticised for making an expensive and dangerous bet on an energy source likely to dry up in the near future. “The coming shortage of natural gas in the United States and Canada, compounded by global oil peak and decline, will try the energy and economic systems of both countries to their limits. It will plunge first the US, then Canada, into a carbon chasm, a hydrocarbon hole, from which they will be hard put to emerge unscathed.”¹¹Julian Darley, 2004, High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing). This is not intended as a criticism of the otherwise excellent book by Mr. Darley. The author does not think anybody could have predicted the shale boom in 2004, it is rather intended as a warning against making any type of dramatic prediction. Let's not forget that Dante (Inferno, Canto XX) placed the fortune tellers and diviners (who were trying to predict the future when alive) in the 8th circle, with their heads twisted backward, condemned to look behind for eternity. The