Stepping on the Gas

A drilling rig in western Pennsylvania. Shale gas reserves in America and Canada may be enough to last for more than 100 years.

With the nuclear industry in crisis and oil prices on the rise, could the solution to our energy problems be in the ground at home? Daniel Yergin on the promise of shale gas.

By DANIEL YERGIN
WSJ

In the early 1980s, George P. Mitchell, a Houston-based independent energy producer, could see that his company was going to run out of natural gas. Almost three decades later, the results of his effort to do something about the problem are transforming America's energy prospects and the calculations of analysts around the world.

Back in those years, Mr. Mitchell's company was contracted to deliver a substantial amount of natural gas from Texas to feed a pipeline serving Chicago. But the reserves on which he depended were running down, and it was not at all clear where he could find more gas to replace the depleting supply. Mr. Mitchell had a strong hunch, however, piqued by a geology report that he had read recently.

In an interview with David Wessel, Daniel Yergin, author of "The Prize," states that the turmoil in the Middle East is a "sea change" for the global oil market and that the U.S. and emerging markets are most economically vulnerable to rising oil prices.

Perhaps the natural gas that was locked into shale—a dense sedimentary rock—could be freed and made to flow. He was prepared to back up his hunch with investment. The laboratory for his experiment was a sprawling geologic formation called the Barnett Shale around Dallas and Fort Worth. Almost everyone with whom he worked was skeptical, including his own geologists and engineers. "You're wasting your money," they told him over the years. But Mr. Mitchell kept at it.

The payoff came a decade and a half later, at the end of the 1990s. Using a specialized version of a technique called hydraulic fracturing (now widely known as "fracking" or "fracing"), his team found an economical way to create or expand fractures in the rock and to get the trapped gas to flow.

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