Why The Commodities Super Cycle Is Complete Or Not?

In today's global economy, energy is one of the most crucial and sought after commodities. Who supplies it and how much they supply determines how much influence they have over other countries as well as the global economy. This is why hydraulic fracturing is currently such an important and controversial topic in the United States. Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as "fracking" or hydrofracturing, is the process of using pressurized liquids to fracture rocks and release hydrocarbons such as shale gas, which burns more efficiently than coal. This booming process of energy production provides a much needed economic boost, creating jobs and providing gas energy for Americans. The efficiently burning shale gas reduces carbon

for approximately 20 years.7 Once hydraulic fracturing was commercialized, independent gas companies quickly pursued the opportunity. Today, nine companies compete for shale gas production in the U.S., and the major oil companies have moved more slowly since the smaller firms were the originators of fracking technologies.8 Hydraulically fracked wells in the U.S. today total over 500,000 and continue to grow rapidly.9 Another key factor which allowed rapid shale gas development is that U.S. law provides that landowners also own the natural minerals under their property, which enabled shale gas developers to lease land for drilling directly from homeowners (in most other countries, the government owns minerals found under properties). Future success with clean energy will require collaboration between the U.S. Government and industry, and our leaders must commit to advancing this agenda in parallel with the continued development of U.S. shale resources.

The American energy revolution, otherwise known as The "Shale Gas Revolution," is described as being the big change in the ways in which we get our oil. In other words, it is a way of making the longevity of the oil we use as energy last just a little bit longer. The conventional oil we extract from the ground is rapidly running out, fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is another way to get more oil out of the ground from less. Much of the oil we have left on Earth is trapped in shale rocks beneath the surface, not easily retrieved. These rocks are impermeable making it difficult to get to the oil enclosed inside. By the use of fracking, which opens up these rocks in order to let the natural gas and crude oil inside flow out, we increase the time in which we have oil left in the Earth, to use this valuable fossil fuel. According to Gold, in 2008 it was a small energy firm located in Canada that was first to administer a report entitled "The Shale Gas Revolution," which took to its supporters and is now used commonly. Gold believes in the revolution because he recognizes that the old ways of extracting the oil are crumbling, coal is no longer the major source of energy for making electricity, and a big change is occurring (Gold, 2014).

The implementation of fracking has had a dramatic economic impact on the United States. The use of fracking in the last decade has increased the production of natural gas from shale formations by 10 times. (Issues) This has resulted in the United States moving more toward natural gas and away from coal to fulfill its energy power needs. In fact, one of the largest production growth areas of

Insight, IHS Global. "The economic and employment contributions of shale gas in the United States." Prepared for America’s Natural Gas Alliance by IHS Global Insight (USA), Washington, DC: America’s Natural Gas Alliance (2011).

The Industrial Revolution created a society and energy consumption based on coal. However, in a more traditional society, natural gas has been obtained through oil drilling. While

These reserves are found within shale formations. Shale is a sedimentary rock that is very low in permeability and porousness making it difficult to tap the gas and oil held within the formations. Due to the combination of fracking and new drilling technology, the production of natural oil and gas has constantly increased every year since 2006. In the year 1990, America reached a height of natural gas and oil production, producing about 70.706 quadrillion BTU of energy but that number would begin to decrease steadily due to the scarcity of acquiring natural gas and oil. In 2006 the production of energy was 69.443 quadrillion BTU. Accordingly, in 2010 fracking became popular and the production level reached 74.812 quadrillion BTU of energy. By 2011, the production of energy increased to 78.091 quadrillion BTU. The domestic production of natural gas and oil had a large contribution towards this growth. With this increase in production, the United states became the second largest natural gas producer in 2011.The European Union which is the third highest producer of natural gas and oil produced only about a quarter of natural gas and oil compared to that produced in the United

In 2000, shale beds where the number one source of America’s constant need for gas. Most of that production increase has come about to the growing need of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking”, which is a process used to release oil or gas from underground formations that are otherwise too hard to mine with other tools. Over the past few years, advances in fracking technology have made huge reserves of natural gas in America economically recoverable. According to the Energy Information Administration, shale gas plays, or fields, in the United States, most notably the Marcellus, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York, and the Barnett, in Texas, are said to contain enough natural gas to give power to the country for a hundred and ten years. With the everlasting specter of energy independence, some have argued that such efforts to recover natural gas need to be expanded. Activists concerned with fracking’s potential environmental hazards view the new process as a serious threat to our environment. There are many different opinions on wether or not fracking is a safe way to gain our gasoline, and to meet the growing demands of gasoline around the world. The process of fracking creates cracks that come from wells into oil and gas formations by pumping highly pressurized fluids, ceramic beads, sand, and a mixture of chemicals, into the gas formation. As this fluid holds the underground fissures open, oil and gas fly up the well to the surface where they are

In this comprehensive research paper from a journal, Benjamin Sovacool provides both the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing and outlines how shale gas extraction is a potential for growth or decline. He provides the idea that fracking costs significantly less than other fossil fuels, which is growing exponentially lower in price over the years. Sovacool also mentions that fracking has a cleaner environmental footprint than coal and oil. In contrast, towards the end of the journal he proposes a holistic view on how to improve fracking.

Klare argues that discovery of a natural resource, for instance, oil, result in producers seeking and exploiting the most desirable, best quality and those closest to markets. Over time, these “easy” resources become scarce, of poorer quality, harder to extract and extend into areas further away from the market. This subsequent need to extract “tougher” resources has catalyzed an age of discovery that energy experts call the “shale revolution.” Daniel Yergin, an author and energy optimist describes the “natural gas

The Haynesville shale in Louisiana is one of several unconventional gas plays that have been discovered in the U.S. in the past decade and promise to dramatically change the course of future energy development given its enormous resource potential. Unconventional gas resources are abundant, but their development is particularly sensitive to technologic risk, geologic uncertainty, and gas price. To produce at commercial rates, shale gas wells require horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing which significantly increases the capital cost. The purpose of this paper is to examine the price sensitivity of Haynesville wells and the economic viability of the play. We characterize the operating envelope under which Haynesville wells are economic

Ultimately, it will be the Member States that will decide to engage in shale gas exploration and extraction. If Member States decide to do so, the information gathered by the European Commission about the advantages and difficulties of shale gas extraction should be influential. Moreover, the EU Member States could learn from the US experience. With appropriate legislation, pollution risks can be minimised, although some environmental disruption and disturbance will be unavoidable. Whether that is tolerable will be for the Member States and their local communities to decide.83 And it is becoming increasingly clear that advocates of shale gas extraction will need to convince the European public, which is still deeply sceptical that shale gas

Figure 1: “Estimates of technically recoverable shale gas resources (trillion cubic feet, tcf) based on 48 major shale formations in 32 countries (EIA, 2011). Russia, Central Asia, Middle East, South East Asia and central Africa were not addressed in the Energy Information Administration report from which this data was taken” (The Royal Society (TRS), 2012, p. 11).

Top to bottom: One of the many plants in existence extracting shale oil, and the other of the shale reserves in the United States presented in a map, and are from www.metallirari.com and www.fracfocus.org.

Fracking is a type of drilling technique that has been used commercially for almost 65 years. Hydraulic fracking is also being used to stimulate new production from older wells. The combination of advanced hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, utilizing state of the art technology, is mostly responsible for todays booming US oil and natural gas production. This paper investigates the relationship between energy independence in the form of Energy Security Risk (ESR) points and Shale gas production in the US. The regression showed that there was a positive relationship between shale gas production and ESR, contrary to theory suggested in the paper.