Chilling threat to efforts to bring Russia in from the cold

Shale Gas. Two small words that could transform the world.

According to Tony Hayward, BP’s Chief Executive at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a “gamechanging technology” has arrived which “transforms the US energy outlook for the next 100 years."

American companies have discovered how to exploit new reserves of gas and coal by breaking up rock formations with a mixture of water, sand and chemicals in a process called hydraulic fracturing.

The USA has become self sufficient in gas almost overnight, causing Russia to dump surplus gas on the European market, prices to collapse and politicians of the shale-rich Ukraine to defy Putin over election interference.

And Shale Gas has the power to end or shrink the prospect of a northern Saudi Arabia in the frozen Barents where the Russians have announced a two year delay on exploration of the Shtokman Field off Murmansk. With the extra costs of working 500 kms offshore, in Arctic conditions and six months of semi-darkness, extracting the Barents estimated 20% of world “conventional” gas supplies was never going to be easy.

Now, it may be uneconomical for months, years or forever.

China, India, Australia, America and central Europe all have shale deposits, and if they can deploy the American technology, they’ll have as little need for LNG as the USA.

But though Shale Gas is less polluting than coal it’s nowhere near as green as the renewable revolution it might also undermine and environmentalists fear that forcing water underground at high pressure could pollute drinking water supplies.

Nonetheless, shale gas could change the power map – especially in the world’s most remote communities.

Here in Arctic Kirkenes, just 14 kms from the Russian border, a vibrant community has existed for centuries based on fishing, Sami reindeer herding and mining iron ore. The strongly unionised workforce was sympathetic to communism long before the Red Army liberated the tiny town from German occupation in 1944. Every home, building and farm in Finnmark was razed to the ground as the Germans retreated. To read more - click here.