Shreveport Shale

While many people may have gotten wind of the “shale gas” production that’s been underway in Shreveport for a few years now, a lot of curious residents still don’t know exactly what shale is, why it’s important and what it could mean for the future of the city, state and world for that matter.Shale gas is an expanding form of natural gas that, as you may have guessed, produced out of shale, or fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock made up of a mixture of clay, quartz and calcite minerals among smaller components of other minerals. The role of shale gas in the natural gas market has increased in recent years with the advent of new technologies capable of harvesting the gas from untappable supplies across the world. Shale resources are believed to be fairly plentiful across the world, with current drilling and gas tapping efforts limited to the US and Canada. Scientists hope the new technology and improved method of harvesting shale gas will rapidly expand to European and worldwide shale reserves, providing significantly greater amounts of natural gas energy as we strive to avoid major energy crises in the not so distant future. The recent advancements regarding shale and its gas releasing potential has given way to large energy companies purchasing major land areas across Eurasia with shale deposits and further development of existing shale facilities in the United States, in hopes of cashing in on the developing technology. Thanks to the new method and technology, optimistic researchers project shale gas to account for half of the total natural gas production in North America in just 10 short years.Long term benefits could prove to be part of the solution to climate change, lowering the resulting greenhouse gas emission output from coal and oil. With huge developing countries like China and India still largely dependent on coal, shale gas provides a welcome potential alternative for environmentalists