From Carpe Diem: How Natural Gas Snuck Up on Beltway Elites -- Sounds Like the Bakken

Mark Perry, author of Carpe Diem, has a very interesting take on the natural gas industry in the United States. One could almost substitute "shale oil" for "shale natural gas" in this article.

Link here.

This is the paragraph that requires close reading:

"One remarkable aspect of the shale gas revolution is that it was not the product of an energy policy edict from Washington, or the result of a bruising political battle to open up public lands and offshore waters for new exploration. Although the Halliburtons of the world are now big in the field, its pioneers were mostly smaller risk-taking entrepreneurs and technological innovators. George P. Mitchell, an independent producer based in Houston, is widely credited as being the prime mover in shale gas, pushing the idea against skeptics. The technology was mainly deployed on existing oil and gas leaseholds or on private land beyond the reach of bureaucrats (for the time being, anyway)."

There's much more in the article that seems to be right on target.