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: 中国jizzxxxx| 小兔子被蛇用两根是什么小说| 国产精品柏欣彤在线观看| 人妻av一区二区三区精品| 久久综合色88| 色综合a怡红院怡红院首页| 白嫩少妇喷水正在播放| 性欧美video在线播放| 十六以下岁女子毛片免费| 久久精品亚洲综合专区| 91欧美在线视频| 立川理惠在线播放一区| 日韩中文字幕在线不卡| 国产小视频在线观看网站| 亚洲欧美中文日韩v在线观看| 97成人碰碰久久人人超级碰OO| 欧美视频亚洲色图| 国产精品永久免费| 亚洲AV无码成人专区| 6080新觉伦| 波多野结衣中文一区二区免费| 少妇无码太爽了视频在线播放| 免费看黄色软件大全| 中文字幕一区二区三区在线播放| 美女被免费网站视频九色| 日本不卡在线播放| 啊轻点灬大ji巴太粗太长了电影| 一个人看的片免费高清大全 | 成人免费视频网| 国产在线观看免费视频软件| 久久国产精品2020盗摄| 黄网址在线观看| 无人区免费高清在线观看| 国产午夜无码片在线观看| 乱人伦中文字幕在线| 五月婷婷激情网| 日本高清免费一本视频无需下载| 国产男女性潮高清免费网站| 久久天堂AV综合色无码专区| 美女视频黄A视频全免费 | 国产李美静大战黑人|