Tag Archives: Fracking

COMING SOON: THE FRACKERS, the untold story of the tycoons behind the US fracking controversy.

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With the debate raging around fracking and its financial and environmental consequences, Portfolio Penguin is bringing you a new exciting book this November that tells the story of how the fracking boom came to be from its roots in the US.

The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman, bestselling author of The Greatest Trade Ever, tells the untold story of the tycoons behind the US fracking controversy.

The Frackers is a riveting narrative of how a group of risk-takers ushered in a new energy age. These individuals transformed the economic, environmental and geopolitical course of the US and the world, making a fortune in the process. It’s a saga that has unfolded on barren rocky fields, in the cluttered pickup trucks of visionary geologists, and in Wall Street boardrooms.

US oil and gas output is up about twenty percent since 2007, making the country the world’s fastest growing energy producer. Daily production is expected to hit ten million barrels by the end of 2015, equal to what Saudi Arabia currently produces.

But some of the very drilling methods that have been a boon to consumers and businesses, such as fracking, also have brought potential environmental danger. A debate is heating up about how serious the dangers are and whether the individuals at the vanguard of the movement will be remembered as much for their environmental impact as the remarkable blessings they’ve brought.

Gregory Zuckerman is a senior writer at the Wall Street Journal and the author of The Greatest Trade Ever. He pens the widely read “Heard on the Street” column and writes about hedge funds, investing, and other Wall Street topics. Zuckerman appears on CNBC twice a week to explain complex trades. He is a two-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for coverage of the credit crisis, the demise of WorldCom, and the collapse of hedge fund Amaranth Advisors.

This book isn’t due for release until November but add it to your Amazon Wishlist of Portfolio Penguin books http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Frackers-Outrageous-Billionaire-Wildcatters/dp/1591846455

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Fracked if we do, Fracked if we don’t!

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Amid the growing debate and controversy surrounding ‘fracking,’ which has been heralded as the future for energy security (certainly from our American counterparts), there has also been a second band of discussion around the environmental impact of burning gas compared to its dirtier alternatives. While in the UK, 2012 reports suggest an upshot in carbon emissions of 4.5%, the US has been proclaiming its success in driving down its emissions over the last few years (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/01/us-carbon-emissions-lowest-levels) as its shale gas industry has boomed and green technologies and alternative energies have been utilised.

With such a success story, why then would the UK not want to get on board with the fracking band wagon? Well besides the national arguments growing over the geological and environmental concern of this controversial technique (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20595228) it seems that the US success story is not as clean-cut as has perhaps been advocated.

What political leaders seem to forget is that, while a national success bodes well on paper for their country, we still live on a planet that shares the same atmosphere, oceans and ecosystem that enables the planet to sustain human life (…for now!) This means then that there needs to be a global agreement if we are truly committed to reversing the impact that the human population has had on this planet since we first came to be.

The following featured article brings a new perspective to the fracking and environmental deabte http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/05/us-emissions-extraction-fracking  It raises the concern that although the US as a nation is managing to reduce its annual emissions, the fact that it is now exporting its coal reserves abroad, which in turn are burnt by other nations for fuel, means that the net emissions are NOT reduced but more than likely continuing to creep up!

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