Stanford Uni – US Shale Gas

John Curtis, Professor of Geochemistry and Director of the Potential Gas Agency at the Colorado School of Mines, looks at the US shale gas industry from a holistic level right down to the molecular level. He covers the different formations found throughout the States with the size of the potential resources in the ground. He then talks about the differences in make up of the shales which affect how easily this can be extracted with the relatively new hydraulic fracturing techniques. A key point of his talk is that the different shale formations cannot be treated the same and production is not uniform, even within the same formation. A lot of the molecular science is still unknown but early research has shown that studying the carbon isotopes (carbon atoms with differing numbers of neutrons) can be an indicator of how productive a gas well might be. A good talk to watch this as there are many things he covers along the way which help fill in the gaps of how the shale gas industry works and what the potential of it is in the future.