Can Shale Gas Reignite the U.S. Economy?

That’s the question Businessweek‘s Paul Barrett posed in a lengthy article last week.

Barrett notes that a little over a decade ago, the idea of America relying on natural gas as an energy source was seeming more and more like a far-fetched notion.

“At the turn of the 21st century, some natural gas basins were nearly tapped out, and once again many utilities, homeowners, and energy-intensive manufacturers dismissed domestic gas as a sucker’s bet.”

Then, in the early 2000s, a series of technological breakthroughs enabled massive reserves of methane to be tapped. By 2009, the U.S. surpassed Russia to become the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Industry experts and government researchers agree that this is only the start.

“The United States has the capacity to become the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”
– Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy

Read more HERE.