In a lengthy essay in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Yergin highlights the promise of America’s abundant shale-gas resources. In “Stepping on the Gas,” Yergin discusses how only a decade ago, there was a presumed shortage of natural gas here in the U.S. Today, however, this energy source has the potential to end America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
What has become known as the “unconventional-natural-gas revolution” has turned a shortage into a large surplus and transformed the natural-gas business, which supplies almost a quarter of America’s total energy.
This revolution has arrived, moreover, at a moment when rising oil prices, sparked by turmoil in the Middle East, and the nuclear crisis in Japan have raised anxieties about energy security. Government and producers alike have turned their attention back to domestic resources.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize, Yergin is the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and one of the energy industry’s leading voices.
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