With so many shale gas reserves available, major energy companies around the world are racing to start drilling. This carries some big environmental risks, but the upside is too great to ignore. Shale gas could one day lower fuel prices, rein in dependence on foreign oil and shrink carbon emissions. “A few years downstream, maybe in the next decade, there will be an energy shortage,” says Olev Trass, a chemical engineering and applied chemistry professor at the University of Toronto. “Shale gas really gives a respite to this whole crisis.”

The shot that kicked off the shale-gas rush came in the form of advancements in horizontal drilling—where a drill turns sideways after boring vertically—and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a process that uses millions of gallons of high pressure liquid to expand cracks in rock and allow gas to leech out. The techniques have made deposits once far too expensive to access viable, and have caught the interest of fuel giants like Shell, ExxonMobil, Encana, Statoil, and smaller firms like Denver-based Forest Oil and Calgary-based Talisman Energy, both of whom are drilling on the Utica shale in southern Quebec, which is thought to hold over a trillion cubic metres of gas. Billions of dollars have also been invested in exploration and drilling projects in India, China, Australia, Russia and Germany since the mid 2000s.

Follow the link to read the full article in Maclean’s magazine.