Analyzing Howard Rogers 'Shale Gas-The Unfolding Story'

For this week’s reading I choose an abstract called “Shale gas-the unfolding story” by Howard Rogers.

This abstract described the US gas production in the early 2000s, as desperate and declining. With gas prices rising, the only hope was the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Starting in 2004, two proven technologies, horizontal drilling and pressure-induced hydraulic fracturing started being utilized. Referred to as the ‘shale gas boom’, production increased by a huge amount, reducing the need for imported LNG to the bare minimum. As Europe took an interest in the hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, questions arose concerning the impacts to other markets through the re-integration of the LNG originally heading to the US (Rogers, 2011).

The style is not what I would choose to use in my writings, although the author leads the reader along, I find it hard to figure out what the thesis of the story was. I know it was about shale gas from the title, but is fracking good or bad? Will the cost of LNG go up if fracking is stopped? Are other US energies affected by the increase in LNG? These questions all came to me as I was reading the abstract, and further reading in the story did not answer them. I consider these unanswered questions to be serious flaws, a reader having questions means the author did not convey his message very well.

Then the comparison of that cost to the real cost of other sources of energy, such as solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal. All 4 of these energies are renewable, do not raise greenhouse gases, and are a necessity for an environmentally sustainable future (Agricultural, 2012). Finally, I would take a stance on what I was writing about, instead of the reader wondering what the Thesis was, it would be stated