The Annual Offshore Oil & Gas Event
logo

The 25thBeijing International Offshore Oil & Gas Exhibition

ufi

BEIJING,CHINA

March 26-28,2025

LOCATION :Home> News > Industry News

High-Energy Innovation: The Case of Shale Gas

Pubdate:2014-12-23 09:24 Source:yueyue Click:

The Global Quest for Natural Gas

The following case study is an excerpt from Breakthrough's latest publication High-Energy Innovation. The report illustrates how energy innovation will increasingly be initiated by developing (as opposed to wealthy) nations and will take place across international borders. The four technologies examined in the report – shale gas, nuclear, carbon carbon and storage, and solar – demonstrate how firmly emerging economies are committed to securing clean, cheap, and reliable energy to meet growing demand. The report focuses on these four technologies not to suggest that they should be the only energy technologies pursued by international efforts, but rather to illustrate the distinct challenges facing different technologies, including their innovation and diffusion in different national contexts.

SHALE GAS

The recent boom in natural gas production in the United States, brought about through technical innovations in the recovery of natural gas from previously inaccessible shale rock formations and land-use policies that favor private development, has helped lower electricity costs and benefited the petrochemical and manufacturing industries. Even more significantly, it has contributed to a drop in US carbon dioxide emissions to their lowest levels in two decades, as inexpensive natural gas accelerates the closure of aging coal plants around the country.

Though hydraulic fracturing’s diffusion across the United States since 2005 was rapid, the actual innovation process occurred over decades. The technique of fracturing rock to recover fuels was invented in the late 1940s, but it required many additional innovations — the result of public-private partnerships and federal investments at many points in the process — to develop a method of fracking that was economically viable. The version of fracking that came to dominate was the one that took advantage of resources available to US companies, particularly the abundant water supplies that made feasible injecting millions of gallons of water into underground rock formations. Fracking’s economic success also depended on external factors such as the continuous improvements to the country’s energy infrastructure, especially its natural gas pipelines.

The possibility of cheaper and cleaner energy from shale gas has prompted interest from governments around the world. If it can achieve the necessary innovations for tapping perhaps the largest shale gas reserves on the planet, China may be able to reduce its dependence on coal and shift to a lower-carbon economy. European countries such as the United Kingdom are also exploring the possibility of exploiting shale gas.



However, caution is warranted. The large deployment of fracking technology faces significant hurdles outside of the US context. China’s nascent industry is plagued by technical bottlenecks, lack of adequate water supply, and poor infrastructure. Drilling an exploratory shale gas well in China still costs much more than it does in the United States.In Europe, the challenges are more likely to be political and legal.Unlike in the United States, European landowners do not automatically own the rights to extract the resources from the ground beneath their property, making the building of new extraction plants fraught with political difficulties.

From this example, three lessons are clear. First, incremental innovation within an existing and powerful segment of the energy sector has lowered American carbon emissions and reaped substantial benefits to the economy. The shale gas revolution has reduced US power sector emissions on the order of 150 to 200 megatons annually over the past decade, and cheaper energy costs have provided a $100 billion-per-year boost to the US economy. Second, the diffusion of energy technologies beyond the techno-economic system from which they emerge is rife with challenges. Third, and precisely because this process is so hard, the transfer of expertise and technical knowledge (rather than merely dropping in hardware) is critical to accelerating diffusion.

Countries have tried to do this by attracting the expertise of US firms. Mexico, for example, has opened up its oil and gas sector to foreign investment14 in order to acquire the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques that can help it access one of the world’s largest reserves of shale gas and tight oil.And a Chinese energy company, Sinopec Group, paid Devon Energy (which had previously acquired Mitchell Energy, the firm that co-created the shale gas revolution with the US government) billions of dollars to work with it on fuel extractions projects, in the hope of gaining access to the US firm’s expertise.Other countries are enthusiastically exploring the possibility of shale gas production, including Argentina, South Africa, and Poland.

主站蜘蛛池模板: 成在线人免费无码高潮喷水| 韩国伦理s级在线| 波多野结衣一区二区三区高清av| 实况360监控拍小两口| 好吊妞精品视频| 免费看的一级毛片| jjzz在线观看| 爱情论坛免费在线看| 大学生毛片a左线播放| 亚洲精品成人区在线观看| 91麻豆精品国产自产在线| 欧美黑人粗大xxxxbbbb| 国产精品自产拍高潮在线观看| 亚洲日本久久一区二区va| 18videosex性加拿大| 欧洲吸奶大片在线看| 国产成人在线网站| 久久久久久久综合色一本| 老湿机香蕉久久久久久 | 亚洲色婷婷综合久久| 99久久精品费精品国产一区二区 | 美女内射毛片在线看3D| 少妇一晚三次一区二区三区| 伊人久久大香线蕉综合电影网| 99国产欧美久久久精品| 欧美性bbbwbbbw| 国产成人精品一区二区三区免费| 久久国产精品偷| 美女一区二区三区| 天堂网404在线资源| 亚洲国产精品无码久久| 911亚洲精品| 拧花蒂尿用力按凸起喷水尿| 免费国产黄网站在线观看视频| 中文字幕日产无码| 精品一区二区三区四区电影| 成人免费黄色网址| 亚洲色无码一区二区三区| 青青草原亚洲视频| 日本亚洲天堂网| 伊人久久综合影院|