Just five years ago, almost no one outside the natural gas industry had heard of fracking, even though the basic technologies were not new; today, the shale gas revolution has transformed America’s energy markets, with profound effects for economic growth, competitiveness, security, and environmental quality. In a nation still deeply concerned about its energy future, this extraordinary success story should prompt the question: Can we do it again?
The answer is yes? -? if we correctly understand both the model for innovation that shale gas exemplifies and an opportunity that now exists to emulate the shale model. That opportunity involves exploiting a technique called “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR).
Like fracking on the eve of its success, this concept is virtually unknown to most Americans, yet it rests not on pie-in-the-sky technological dreams but on the application and refinement of proven technologies that companies have been developing for decades. Like fracking, enhanced oil recovery has the potential to recover staggering quantities of hydrocarbons that were previously known but considered inaccessible. As with fracking, the primary players will be the private sector?—?but public policy has a crucial role to play in establishing the necessary conditions and providing the impetus for this market to take off. Most tantalizingly, enhanced oil recovery should be less controversial than fracking, because it also offers the opportunity to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric power generation (and other industries).