A year ago some optimists were saying that Australia had 6,000 years of shale gas. Hence no need for nukular to replace coal and we can make petrol from gas as they do in Malaysia. Now it looks like only a couple of regions will produce shale gas from horizontal drilling. The other unconventional gas, coal seam, has its own set of problems that will probably come to a head if farmers sue gas companies.

The recent energy white paper (chapter 9) suggests the price of gas could triple then mysteriously decline. Apart from everything else gas fired generation is the preferred way of balancing variable output from wind and solar. If indeed gas does triple in price perhaps it's back to coal carbon tax or not. We're seeing this in Germany.

Twenty years from now we'll look back and wish we hadn't exported so much gas or burned it for baseload power.

Well Arthur's right, there isn't a lot of gas in shale as a percentage of total volume; hence the need to drill more and more wells, and or, confront the law of diminishing returns.
There is however, a significant amount, [percentage,] of shale oil or naphtha, that's virtually as good as refined sulphur free diesel, as is?
It is relatively easy to recover and simultaneously refine in the ground, by injecting super heated steam in one hole and recovering ready to use fuel from another.
Yes sure, this requires an energy input, but not as much as many other refining processes, such as the world's dirtiest fuel, Canadian tar sands!
And America has enough of this oil to rival the entire known reserves of the Middle East! Particularly important, given the ever rising volatility of that area!
That said, events are unfolding in the USA, that virtually guarantee, the world will experience another Great Depression!
America is trillions in debt and borrowing billions to service debt!
Part of the problem has been the 70 or so billion they spent annually, to import foreign oil; thanks to the greens and their enduring exclusive economic ineptitude!
[There really are people who believe electricity comes out of the wall!]
[And others, who indeed believe, the 47% assisted by welfare or govt support, can actually afford their preferred changes?]
The other part, has been quite massive tax breaks for obscenely rich folks like Warren Buffet, who'se personal fortune hovers somewhere around a reported 50 billion?
And who'se secretary pays tax, at double the rate applied to Warren and millions of other, obscenely wealthy folk.
The Greek economy, a rare example of; how to deliberately scuttle an economy, with three times more public servants than is actually needed, and tax avoidance on a hitherto unimaginable scale.
We will recover, and that recovery will lead to another post depression period of unprecedented prosperity, created in part, by the adoption of very low cost energy alternatives, that literally walk out the door, and create flow on prosperity, as they do so!
Rhrosty.

"...at Fukushima, the nuclear reactor, was right on top of a major fault."

Wrong.

The problems at Fukishima had to do flooding due to a tsunami, which was itself due to an earthquake hundreds of km away, off the coast.

One Middle East oil Minister, is on the public record, saying, the stone age didn't end because of a shortage of stone! Quote, unquote.
He went on to say, that he thought that hydrogen would be the fuel of the future.
He could be right, but only if the current oil industry is not involved; and, the hydrogen is recovered exclusively from sea water; and then only, by replacing very inefficient electrolysis, with a much more efficient, very low cost, thoroughly modernised, water molecule cracking process!
More energy efficient water molecule cracking, should be safer than current modern petrol refining; [hydrocarbon cracking,] given actual volatility comparisons!
Most current combustion engines, will run quite happily on compressed NG. [Methane.]
And we can make very cheap methane, by simply converting waste to biogas!
Too easy, and endlessly sustainable!
In our foreseeable future, we will see algae replacing fossil fuel!
It makes perfect sense, given fossil oil is a derivative of ancient algae!
Some algae are up to 60% oil, with oil rich Australian varieties preferred by some American researchers?
During the most recent enduring drought, almost the only thing flourishing in the Murray/Darling basin, was extremely hardy, very low water use, algae!
The oil extraction is virtual child's play, and available, as is, as a sulphur free, very low cost, endlessly sustainable, bio-diesel!
Anyone with an ounce of common sense, implicitly understands, that the very best alternatives, will be the ones with universal appeal, that virtually walk out the door, and indeed, like carbon absorbing algae, actually mitigate against carbon caused climate change!
Rhrosty.

(1) Rhrosty wrote of efficient water molecule cracking, as though such a technology exists for separating hydrogen from oxygen of a water molecule.

There are, of course, inefficiencies involved in H2 production electrolytically, but the primary energy input is precisely that which is required to break the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen. That energy is the same as that which is released when H2 is burned in air. It is unavoidable that cracking the water molecule, by any means, is energy-intensive. The big question is where the energy to do so will come from.

(2) "We can make very cheap methane simply by converting waste to methane." That may well be so, but physical limits must be recognised. There is nowhere near sufficient waste around to digest to make (for example) sufficient aviation fuels for Australia's domestic air fleet. The best illustration I can think of is Sweden, which has highly developed waste conversion facilities and even imports wastes because there is insufficient available domestically. They have reached their limit.

It is not sufficient for Rhrosty or others to dream of Utopia. Construction of an energy Utopia is a step by step process, limited by the usual laws of conservation of energy and of mass, as well as supplies of the almighty dollar, of labour and of time... all of which are in short supply in a warming world.

Quite right John Bennetts

I remember magazine articles of more than 40 years ago talking about hydrogen storage and self-sufficient houses and the like. Its utopian; it isn't going to happen. Central production remains a far cheaper approach and, so far, the only large-scale solution to the problem of storing large amounts of electricity is to build massive dams.

Production of fuels by biological means sounds good until you realise all the practical complications, like the use of large areas of good farming land to produce the fuel. Although I don't know about using algae in tanks to produce petrochemicals, as opposed to growing plants, I suspect you will need a lot of tanks to make any difference at all.