Health care, telecommunications and the auto industry, for example, continue to get better, smarter and more effective by the day. The safe, tightly-regulated development of natural gas is no different, as technologies are being further and continually development, leveraged and widely-used to ensure our environment is protected and more American energy is safely produced. A recent IHS report states:
Just half a decade ago, the outlook for meeting America’s demand for oil and natural gas was increasingly focused on non-domestic sources of supply. The standard view held that domestic production would inevitably decline and imports would consequently rise. Indeed, US oil production had been falling for nearly four decades. The country was on a path to spending several hundreds of billions of dollars more a year on imports to meet oil and natural gas demand.
Now, however, technologies – principally horizontal drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing – allow energy producers to safely access and produce once unthinkable amounts of domestic, clean-burning natural gas in an environmentally safe way. And as more wells are safely drilled, all done within a robust and effective regulatory framework, more information is gathered about the various source rocks (Marcellus, Utica, etc.). This robust data better informs natural gas producers regarding where and how to drill, and which technologies are best situated for the given formation. Important to keep in mind: while shale formations often have similar characteristics, no two shale formations are identical.
