A senior State Department official said Tuesday that the U.S.
boom in producing natural gas from shale rock formations could pave
the way for other countries to expand development that allows
displacement of carbon-heavy coal.
David Goldwyn, the coordinator for international energy affairs, was
bullish about global shale-gas potential in remarks with reporters
during a State Department conference in Washington, D.C., devoted to
international coordination on the resource.
“The U.S. shale-gas phenomenon has transformed global energy
markets. Because we have discovered and we have the technology to
develop efficiently large quantities of gas from shale, global
prices of liquefied natural gas have decreased. Gas has become
cheaper. Gas is now competitive with coal on a BTU basis, which
means that countries that might use coal can now not make an
economic choice, but on a competitive basis choose gas for their
next level of power generation,” he said.
He said plentiful shale-gas supplies can help increase energy
security, giving nations — including China and India — the ability
to diversify and expand energy sources, and slow greenhouse gas
emissions (burning natural gas emits fewer greenhouse gases than
coal or oil).
"In Eastern Europe in particular, it’s really diversity of
supply; it’s a national security issue," Goldwyn said.
Goldwyn said a major goal of the conference is working with other
countries to help stand up the needed regulatory structures for
development. “We have, in our country, an umbrella of laws and
regulations that makes sure this is done safely and efficiently. We
have federal regulation of air and water. We have state regulation
of land use and water. We have the capacity to monitor and to
regulate. And even then, there’s the need for enforcement,” he said.
“So what we did was we gathered all these agencies together for two
days to explain all of these things to governments,” Goldwyn added.
He said there were 20 countries represented at the conference.
But the conference comes as environmental activists say U.S.
shale-gas production is endangering water supplies due to the
industry’s use of a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing.
It involves high-pressure injections of chemicals, water and sand to
break apart rock formations and enable trapped gas to flow.
The U.S. EPA is currently studying the environmental and health
effects of “fracking,” —
the House Energy and Commerce Committee is also probing the
drilling method. Drillers won exemptions from key Safe
Drinking Water Act mandates in a 2005 energy law.
Goldwyn, however, seemed confident that U.S. and state-level
regulators are proceeding carefully with development.
“While hundreds of thousands of wells have been drilled successfully
in the United States so far, the lesson that we want all these
countries to understand is that you have to have technically
competent people operating and you have to have laws and regulations
in place first,” he said.
“We also heard a lot about the evolution in the states about new
requirements for disclosure when – of what’s in the fluids. We heard
new things from the companies about the move to use organic and
green fluids in the process and about new technology for making the
operations safer,” he later added.
—This post was updated at 5:11 p.m. on Aug. 24.
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