Kemp: The Real Shale Revolution

The shift was foreseen by Schlumberger: "In simple terms, horizontal wells allow us to do things more efficiently than vertical wells. It would be short-sighted to ignore a technique which offers improved drainage in typical reservoirs and more discrete compartments in complex reservoirs, while helping reduce gas and water coning."

Lessons Learned

Commentators often write about the shale revolution as if it began in Texas in the early years of the 21st century. But no revolution emerges from nowhere. The fuse for the shale revolution was lit at least at decade earlier.

The authors of articles about horizontal drilling back in the late 1980s and mid-1990s would have been surprised it is seen as a 21st century phenomenon given how much of the revolution had been anticipated 20 years earlier.

Commentators, particularly those sceptical about fracking, also draw a sharp distinction between "good" conventional oil and gas well and "bad" unconventional fracked ones.

But history shows there is no clear division between conventional and unconventional oil and gas production.

Fracking and horizontal drilling have both been widely applied in both conventional and unconventional contexts.

Techniques pioneered to extract oil and gas from conventional but complicated formations have then been applied back into unconventional contexts, and vice versa.