Russia's 'fracked' future

MOSCOW (UPI) — For most of the past decade, Russian leaders and their top officials and businessmen have believed that their huge reserves of oil and gas would guarantee them prosperity and global influence for decades to come. But suddenly some cracks are emerging in that confidence.

As often happens, technology is changing the conventional wisdom. Over the past five years the combination of two technologies has transformed the energy market in the United States and now threatens to do the same elsewhere in the world.

The first new technology is horizontal drilling, which allows one vertical well to tap widely into a whole layer of oil or gas. The second is hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which involves pumping mixtures of water and chemicals into certain rock formations, particularly shale rock. This breaks up the shale to release the oil and gas that had been trapped in the rock.

This “fracking” is a game-changer, unleashing our access to oil and gas that were hitherto out of reach. In June 2009 the U.S. Potential Gas Committee reported that advances in extraction technology meant they could estimate U.S. gas reserves as being 35 percent higher than they were in 2007.

UPI