IHS Markit expects natural gas production to rise by almost 8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) or more than 10 percent in 2018 alone. Altogether, U.S. production is expected to grow by another 60 percent over the next 20 years, the report says.

Additionally, IHS Markit now estimates that approximately 1,250 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of U.S. supply is economic below $4 per MMBtu Henry Hub price today, up from a previous estimate of 900 Tcf in 2010.

The new report, entitled The Shale Gale Turns 10: A Powerful Wind at America’s Back assesses the impacts of the first 10 years of the unconventional gas revolution—unlocked through the combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies—and its future potential. When the shale revolution began a decade ago, the prevailing assumption was that the U.S. supply base was being exhausted and that the country would have to become a major importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Instead, in what the report describes as a “wholesale turnaround,” U.S. output rose by more than 40 percent in that first decade (2007-2017) and real natural gas prices fell by two thirds during the same period.

In contrast to the assumption a decade ago, the United States is now on track to become one of the world’s major LNG exporters, the report notes. IHS Markit expects U.S. LNG export capacity to more than double in the next five years and rise to at least 10 Bcf/d by 2023.

“To say that the ‘Shale Gale’—as IHS Markit originally coined it in 2010—has been anything but a veritable revolution would be an understatement,” said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman, IHS Markit and co-author of the report. “It represents a dramatic and largely unanticipated turnaround that dramatically changed both markets and long-term thinking about energy. The profound and ongoing impacts on the industry, energy markets, the wider economy and the U.S. position in the world continue to unfold.”

The most dramatic effect has been on the U.S. electric power industry, the report says. Where coal and nuclear had previously dominated the growth in share of U.S. electric power generation, natural gas has become a “backbone of electric generation” and regularly competes with coal for the largest share of total electric generation. By 2040, IHS Markit expects natural gas’ share to grow from almost one-third to nearly half of all electricity generated in the United States.

The report observes that the Shale Gale, has also made a major contribution to reducing U.S. CO₂ emissions. IHS Markit estimates that in 2017, CO₂ emissions from power generation were down 30 percent from 2005. More than half of that emission decline was from gas replacing coal.

What started with natural gas would be extended to oil a few years later, with enormous global impact, the report notes. Between 2008 and 2018, U.S. oil output more than doubled and exceeded the previous height set in 1970. On a net basis, the United States went from importing 60 percent of its liquid fuel at the peak to below 16 percent in 2018—and the share is still falling. The United States is now on track to be the world’s largest oil producer, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia, by early next year.

The combined developments of unconventional oil and gas have had far-reaching impacts for the manufacturing sector and the U.S. economy as a whole, the report says.

IHS Markit estimates that more than $120 billion in new capital investments will be spent from 2012-2020 to expand U.S. petrochemical manufacturing capacity—a result of abundant and inexpensive natural gas and natural gas liquids providing advantages in terms of thermal energy, feedstock and electricity costs. “Ancillary” investments could double that number, the report says.

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CFACT Senior policy analyst Bonner Cohen uncovered a “side agreement” President Obama’s EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy made with the UN that could be used to resurrect UN climate policies here in the United States.

Cohen explains that a relatively unknown “Memorandum of Understanding,” (MOU) commits the EPA and UN to “achieve their common goals and objectives in the field of the environment.”

In other words, even though there’s no formal treaty or agreement, bureaucrats at EPA are given instruction to carry out radical UN environmental objectives like killing fossil fuel production, hammering auto makers with costly vehicle mandates, enacting carbon taxes, and letting subsidies for inefficient wind and solar run wild.

We asked Bonner how best to alert the Administration about the existence of this "MOU" and he suggested reaching out directly to EPA. 

We cannot let deep state bureaucrats undo all the hard work we have accomplished in convincing President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Accord.

Is the Trump Administration aware of this Memorandum of Understanding?  They need to be, so they can replace this document with a new "understanding" that the United States will not place its energy and economic futures in the hands of the UN!