Shale Gas in the Middle of the Worldwide Energy Drama [Blog Series] | AIChE

Shale Gas in the Middle of the Worldwide Energy Drama [Blog Series]

October 10, 2012

This is Part 4 in the ChEnected series "We Are ChE: Entering a Golden Age", authored by Incoming 2013 AIChE president Phil Westmoreland.

To follow up on my previous posts, another important reason for foreseeing a new Golden Age of ChE is the dramatic change in the energy picture during the last two years.

One of the biggest changes is the surge in production of natural gas by hydrofracturing. “Fracking” has dropped gas prices dramatically, altering US energy, organic-chemicals, and polymers businesses and foreshadowing changes throughout the world.

A US shale-gas boom

Hydrofracturing is more than sixty years old, but during the last four years, it has taken off in the gas-rich Marcellus shale formations in the northeastern US.

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Dr. Phillip R. Westmoreland

Phil Westmoreland is a professor at North CarolinaState University in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His research focuses on reaction kinetics and engineering, obtained from experiments, computational chemistry and reactor modeling. His Chemical Engineering degrees are fromN.C. State (BS73), LSU (MS74) and MIT (PhD86). From 1986-2009, Phil was at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and in 2006-2009 he served as a Program Director at NSF.

He was 2013 AIChE President; is a Trustee and past president of the educational nonprofit CACHE Corporation; and was...Read more