The shale gas weekend

Shale gas seems to be the flavor of this weekend wherever one looks.  If the Wall Steet Journal did an editorial defending fracking, the New York Times continued its superb Drilling Down series on shale gas with a piece questioning if the industry was another bubble in the making.

The WSJ editorial was a great point-wise rebuttal of the major advocacy efforts against fracking, while still highlighting the need for industry to be extra-vigilant on safety and environmental risks.  It was refreshing to see an editorial focus on facts versus unsubstantiated opinion.  The NY Times article — based on a ~450-page archive of emails and documents — highlighted concerns around decline curves, asset valuations, economics, and the hype-driven transactional activity.

Shale gas in North America is a nascent yet dynamic industrial enterprise.  It is too early to make calls around a number of uncertainties although they do provide stakeholders — companies, service providers, investors, and regulators — with a framework to evaluate and address these plans.

Friedman on solar energy: Invented in U.S., sold abroad

Tom Friedman visited Applied Materials recently and has written a piece in the New York Times hypothesizing why all of its solar panel factories are abroad.  His conclusion:

… their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.