"Gasland" Is a Fraud; The Promise of Shale Gas is Real

In the US, unconventional gas is providing a much needed energy boost. Over the next 20 years, shale gas is destined to grow from 15% of US gas production to roughly 50% of production.

Contrary to the blatant falsehoods (PDF) displayed in the Oscar-nominated "documentary" Gasland, production of shale gas is as clean or cleaner than production of any other type of non-nuclear energy or fuel.

Extent of Marcellus Shale Resource
Several nations in Europe are growing more interested in their own shale oil resource, and are beginning to drill test wells.

In countries like Britain, Germany and Poland, exploratory drilling is under way, or about to begin, as engineers try to determine how much shale gas is present and how easy it will be to retrieve. New technologies for extracting natural gas from stone have raised worries about contamination of drinking water while also driving a huge drilling expansion in the United States, helping push prices down by two thirds since 2008 and reducing dependence on imports.

Shale gas production accounted for 14 percent of U.S. natural gas production in 2009 and is expected to reach 45 percent by 2035, the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates.

“It was an amazing story in the U.S., this very rapid increase in the availability of shale gas,” said Paul Stevens, senior research fellow for energy at Chatham House, a London research institute. European exploration has big potential too, he added... _NYT

More on Marcellus Shale -- just one of several huge US gas deposits, now available for production thanks to improved drilling technologies.

Faux environmentalists inside and outside of the Obama regime have sworn to shut down US energy production -- including shale gas -- no matter what it takes. The Obama agenda of "energy starvation" shines through in the regime's offshore oil de facto drilling moratorium, in the shutting down of coal mines and coal power plants, in the attempts to shut down Canadian oil sands imports, in behind-the-scenes moves to shut down US shale gas, and in the Obama Nuclear Regulatory Commission's blatant dragging of its feet on new nuclear designs and plants. The EPA's decision to regulate CO2 -- a keystone to the chain of life on Earth -- as a "dangerous pollutant" is a clear indication that Obama's interests are not dictated by the welfare of humans in the US or anywhere on Earth.

More: From Master Resource, here are some maps for the three main types of unconventional gas resource for the US.

More from Master Resource here and here. Methane is a compound found on other planets and moons in significant quantities in the outer solar system. It has also been found to be generated in Earth's mantle abiotically. Vast quantities of methane clathrates exist beneath seafloors and in arctic regions. It is unlikely that humans will ever come close to running out of methane -- particularly when it is so easily produced via anaerobic digestion of waste biomass.

We must have fossil fuel resources such as oil, gas, coal, oil sands, etc. in order to give us time to move to more sustainable energy sources such as advanced fission, fusion, enhanced geothermal, advanced biofuels and bioenergy, orbital solar, and perhaps low energy nuclear reaction reactors.

From an earlier Al Fin article

It is clear that the faux environmentalist lefty-Luddite greens of the dieoff.orgy persuasion, will do whatever they can to shut down viable energy resources. They are incapable of modifying or altering their own internal dreams of global doom and dieoff. Persons so deeply steeped in doom are unlikely to grow beyond their programmed indoctrination. But the rest of us can move on -- as long as we take the necessary precautions.