“Exporting the U.S. shale energy revolution overseas turns out to be far tougher than anyone expected—giving the U.S. a significant competitive advantage. Shale oil and natural gas have rejuvenated the North American energy industry and boosted the economy by supplying companies and consumers with cheap fuel. There are huge shale deposits outside of North America that global energy companies and governments are eager to tap. But oil companies are running into obstacles as they try to replicate the U.S. experience on other continents. The result is that significant overseas shale energy production could be a decade away.” [Wall Street Journal, Subscription Required]
There are ways to convert natural gas into ethanol. Most cars can use E-85 fuel. If we could do that, it would be a sensible way to get NG and lower polluting fuel into our cars. The corn ethanol approach is just slightly above break even energy wise, and when you consider all the effort put in to making it, it is not worth producing.
I should have said “sometimes they put a 15 hour hold on allowing free pass for newly posted articles – gives their suscribers a chance to read it first”
A trick is to search for the article by name in google and then click on the first WSJ article that comes up. Usually you get a free pass version of the article. WSJ lets you see up to three articles a day this way. Sometimes they put a 15 hour hold on allowing the free pass.
many areas that have NG (interior Australia, interior China and Mongolia) in Deep sources like shale lack adequate water to Frack and un-lock the production. also the NOC’s participate in hostile take overs of american E&P companies that successfully find NG production. also some areas in India and China are covered in urban neighborhoods that dont have adequate openings to build the massive drilling pads that are required to hold all of the frack fluids required to frack the well. despite the large volumes of fluid required to produce the NG as an energy source, it is about 1/10 of the water required to produce the same BTU of alternative fuels, i.e. ethanol.
Funny thing, when sandy hit the E. Coast, no one was demanding gallons of e-85. there is more energy than we will every be able to burn. we will poison ourselves with fertilizers and pesticides or nuclear war before we die of global warming or acid rain.
What is stopping them?? Gubmint regulation in Euroland.
Dunno what’s stopping overseas shale gas production because the WSJ paywall is stopping me. Nice teaser article though.
So what is stopping them?