Early Researchers Were Key To Developing Unconventional Gas

摘要

I still read newspapers nearly every day. The many articles spawned by the Marcellus Shale gas development pushed me to reconsider several key people at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and its precursors, and at the Gas Research Institute, with whom I have been privileged to work since 1975. We apply technologies and knowledge to produce half the gas we use today that these people pioneered for unconventional resources. The Energy Information Administration predicts that contribution will be 74 percent by 2035. Devonian gas shales, tight gas sands and coalbed natural gas followed similar research and development paths. The Department of Energy started the initiatives in earnest in 1978 in response to declining conventional gas production. The charge was to quantify unconventional resources and develop extraction methodologies for the major sources. After 14 years, the government terminated these resource-based programs and developed technology-based programs. GRI, with heavy input from industry, built on DOE's success and had continued development through commercialization, in some cases. I was fortunate enough to represent DOE on the GRI Producers Advisory Group for Gas Supply. So I got to see both programs, and to know the managers and technologists in them.