Shale gas development there are still many unsolved mysteries

Gail Rafter incumbent energy security research think-tank Institute for Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) co-director, and served as the U.S. Energy Security Council adviser. The Commission is the highest level of the United States Advisory Group, by former cabinet ministers and business leaders.
"21st Century": Do you think the U.S. is  shale gas  development boom will last? Future returns in this area will rise?
Rafter: Frankly I do not know the answer. A few months ago, I met at a luncheon of the year pioneered the use of  Hydraulic fracturing   George Mitchell, the longevity of this year he has 94. He told me that 35 years ago he invented this technique, a start nobody cares. Almost overnight, it leaps and bounds, everywhere. However, the industry today, there are still many unknown problems still exist between information and data needed to fill the gap. For example, we have yet to understand the process of shale gas development will overflow much methane. Greenhouse effect of methane is about 17 times that of carbon dioxide. But we know that if the overflow ratio exceeds 2% methane, shale gas mining process caused by the greenhouse effect is more serious than coal. But what overrun by 2.5%, 3% or 10%, we are currently unclear. So, a lot of the basic problems of shale gas development we do not figure it out.
Another point that many people do not know. Each country's situation is not the same shale. For example most of the U.S. shale Marcellus Shale (Marcellus) - Pennsylvania mostly this, fracturing technology in this type of shale to good effect. When people get Poland again with this technique, the results completely impossible.
If you take China, the result may not the same. Why? Because the rock is not the same geological conditions. Therefore, to realize that we are ignorant on many issues. Another example fracturing technology.
United States in recent years a lot of strange sudden earthquakes, which have occurred in the past, there has not been an earthquake, many people suspect that this and related hydraulic fracturing? But who knows? We are still in the learning curve, to solve these problems, Japan, longer.