Europeans seek U.S. energy drilling know-how

Colombus, Ohio — With one eye cast toward home, giant European energy companies are investing billions in U.S. natural gas and oil fields where huge, hard-to-get reserves have been unlocked with new drilling technology.

That technology is the prize in Europe, where gas production has declined and where an international utility dispute recently left people in more than a dozen European countries shivering in unheated homes.

Europe’s natural gas supply is routed through Ukraine from Russia. Russia supplies about one-quarter of the EU’s natural gas, with 80 percent of it shipped through Ukraine. A rift between the two nations left more than a dozen European countries with little or no gas for two weeks last month.

Declines in European gas production has potentially made the new techniques used in the United States even more pivotal.

San Francisco Chronicle