Trend of discovering conventional oil and gas fields is in steady decline, while global demand is sharply increasing, which is rising concerns regarding long term supply with hydrocarbons. Sources of hydrocarbons which could significantly contribute at meeting future demands, are unconventional sources of oil and gas, such as tight oil and shale gas.
We discuss sources of tight oil and shale gas, which became commercially attractive in last decade, mostly due to technological advances of long-known technologies, like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. Although these sources of unconventional hydrocarbons could be found all over the world, most commercial exploitation is bound to North America.
We focused on (1) potential and possible scope of unconventional hydrocarbon development in USA, Europe and also on global level, where we (2) pointed out problematic, uncertainty and variability, which from economic, technological and ecologic perspective characterize possible development scenarios. We assessed (3) influence of natural gas on electric power sector in USA.
By analyzing available literature we observed, that opinion among profession is in general very polarized regarding potential and scope of unconventional hydrocarbon exploitation and that there appears to be no predominant opinion present, which lead us to include such polarized views in our findings. Furthermore, opinions were widely uncertain and variable, which we pointed out in our conclusions.
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