New Technology Magazine

A well written feature by Jonathan Fahey of Associated Press this week provides a well researched synopsis of the shale gas/tight oil revolution and its enormous consequences, from the impact new technology has had to reverse the decline in oil and gas production to the setback it has created for renewables.

It may not be the kind of attention Canadian pipeline operators are looking for, but a tiny U.S. web-only publisher, InsideClimate News, walked away with a coveted Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting last week for its extensive coverage of the aftermath of the Enbridge, Inc. oilsands pipeline spill in Michigan and pipeline safety and regulation in the U.S.

The debate over the disclosure of ingredients in fracture fluids was reignited in the U.S. this week with the release of a Harvard Law School report Monday that criticized the online registry of chemicals used in many states, www.fracfocus.org. The two-year-old, third-party website has been discussed in past issues of New Technology Magazine—a similar site covers Canada at www.fracfocus.ca. FracFocus is used by hundreds of oil and gas companies and relied on by 11 U.S. states as their primary frac chemicals disclosure tool.

While it remains to be seen how successful it might be, Royal Dutch Shell’s announcement this week it would invest several hundred million dollars in emerging technology companies is certainly a step in the right direction. The company, one of the industry’s biggest research and development spenders (in 2012, Shell spent more than US$1.3 billion on R&D), indicated it is looking for ideas from outside the company as part of its open-innovation approach.

The enormous challenges involved in remote Arctic offshore oil and gas exploration has claimed—at least temporarily—another victim as Royal Dutch Shell plc acknowledges this summer’s planned drilling activity in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas has been abandoned. As New Technology Magazine detailed in its cover story in January/February—Northern Challenge—Shell has already invested $4.5 billion in its most resent Arctic quest, mobilizing new technologies, a large fleet of drilling and support vessels and six years of planning and jumping through regulatory hoops to get to the point of spudding two exportation wells.

We have seen the impact horizontal drilling and multistage fracking technologies have had on natural gas markets, creating a glut of gas that has flattened prices and led to plans for export of a commodity we once thought North America was running out of.