Recently, a friend sent me a link to news that warned of new US government regulations on hydraulic fracturing that could stop shale exploration. If this happened, what the consumer would lose is access to the natural gas produced from shale. Source: Natural Gas for America
Earlier this week, the White House said the natural gas industry should support “common sense” regulation to ease public worry about potential water contamination from fracturing, a drilling practice vital to the U.S. shale gas boom.
In fact, according the Natural Gas.org, the US has about 100 years of supply (if developed) at current rates of consumption, while Reason.com reports that the IEA says world natural gas supplies could last more than 250 years.
While development of natural gas from shale may come to a stop in the US due to environmental concerns, China is looking at the production and resources of shale gas in the United States and is learning from America.
China’s technically recoverable resources of shale gas are estimated to be about 50 percent higher than those in the United States.
EIA.DOE.gov says, “The outlook for unconventional natural gas production is more positive in China than in OECD Europe first and foremost because China’s geology suggests a greater unconventional resource potential than in Europe. Further, although natural gas production from conventional resources in China, as in Europe, cannot keep up with domestic demand, China’s government strongly supports unconventional gas development, and public resistance is likely to be less of an impediment in China than in OECD Europe and the US.”
While developing natural gas resources in China, there is also Biogas development in rural China, which the two embedded videos talk about. China is taking advantage of waste to produce energy, which results in higher standards of living for those involved.
Imagine the biogas from 1.3 billion people and the animals raised to feed those people.
Discover The One Party Advantage, Water – Two Countries Tell a Tale, Volting China into the 21st Century or Greenpeace China
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Sounds great! . . . except for the fact that China has already boughten up a huge chunk of land leases from Chesapeake Gas . . . . and that’s just part of it….
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/cnooc-in-2-2-billion-deal-with-chesapeake-energy/
This whole energy self sufficiency thing is a crock being fomented by gas company landmen in order to get the farmers to sign the lease …………
I’ve read that China has also been buying into foreign energy companies in addition to other industries.
It’s called taking care of the “National Interest” (but in this case it is China’s national interest), which is to improve the lifestyles of China’s people and in the last three decades China has reduced poverty more than any nation on the earth (90% of global poverty reduction took place in China). The CIA Factbook pegs severe poverty in China at two-and-a-half percent while it’s next door neighbor India has a severe poverty rate of almost 40% affecting about 400 million people.
There is a HUGE challenge for China to accomplish these goals.
The US only has to provide energy and modern infrastructure to about 310 million people and has had more than a century to build the infrastructure to do that without wars devestating the progress as it has in Europe and Asia.
China, on the other hand, has only had a few decades to build this infrastructure and has to eventually provide opportunites for living better lifestyles that includes energy to 1.3 billion people and if China doesn’t, the consequences could be bloody uprisings leading to the same chaos and anarchy China faced after the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, which lasted until 1949.
Then of course there was the calamity of the Great Leap Forward and the upside-down insanity of The Cultural Revolution that prolonged the pain until 1976 with Mao’s death.
What drives the “National Interests” in the US that led to the Vietnam War then the Iraq War in addition to a dependence of foreign oil?