“While commercial operations would take time to start, India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has struck the first shale gas in a pilot project at Ichhapur in Burdwan, West Bengal. Its drilling started on October 27, 2013, with ConocoPhillips, which helped ONGC in providing technical help in well planning and data evaluation stage. In addition, ONGC has spudded one more well for shale gas and oil exploration in Gandhar area of Cambay basin.”

Shale gas can emerge as an important alternative source of energy in India. Identified shale-gas formations are spread over several sedimentary basins of the country, such as Cambay, Gondwana, Krishna Godavari Onland, and Cauvery. Shale oil is less developed. [1]

Shale gas is important because India wants to add natural gas’s 7 percent share of its energy basket, now filled with coal and oil.…

One of the nation’s important energy analysts is Michael Giberson, an economist at the Center for Energy Commerce in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. Giberson, who has occasionally posted at MasterResource,  teaches energy courses at Tech such as U.S. Energy Policy and Regulation and Energy Economics.

Giberson is also a principal (with fellow energy expert Lynne Kiesling of Northwestern University) of the energy-centric Knowledge Problem, described as “Commentary on Economics, Information, and Human Action.”

A month ago, Giberson critically reviewed a study by the Breakthrough Institute that claimed, basically, that government energy activism crucially enabled the shale gas (and oil) revolution that is now sweeping much of the United States and many countries around the world.

“New Investigation Finds Decades of Government Funding Behind Shale Revolution,” announced Breakthrough on December 20, adding:

Breakthrough Institute research and interviews show the direct and sustained support federal agencies provided to the gas industry leading up to the modern natural gas revolution.

For two researchers at Cornell University, it’s turning out to be a very tough year.

Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea released a study this past Spring that found emissions from natural gas produced from shale are worse than coal, based on the global warming potential (GWP) of methane. Since it was released, numerous institutions have weighed in and come to a fairly uniform conclusion: The Howarth/Ingraffea paper simply has too many errors to be credible.

New University of Maryland Study

Nonetheless, ideological opponents of shale gas have continued to wield the Cornell paper as a major weapon against this game changing source of energy. But a new study released by the University of Maryland, The Greenhouse Impact of Unconventional Gas for Electricity Production, suggests that Cornell’s paper has been intellectually superceded.…

When New York Magazine reported earlier this month that the national editor of  the New York Times had sent an internal memo laying out a “surprisingly detailed” defense of reporter Ian Urbina’s latest front-page attack on natural gas, the hope was that the memo would spur an equally detailed response by Arthur Brisbane, the Times’ public editor.

That hope was realized when Mr. Brisbane’s 1,100-word piece was postedon the paper’s website over the weekend, a column in which Brisbane takes square aim at the Times for going “out on a limb” and “lack[ing] an in-depth dissenting view in the text” (see the Appendix below for more of his piece).

The Brisbane piece is remarkable for a number of reasons and on a number of levels, continuing the healthy scrutiny that spontaneously emerged from various respected experts over the past three weeks.…