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Another level of irony is that this is partly because Europe does not want to develop shale gas for environmental reasons, so it imports US LNG... which is most

Another level of irony is that this is partly because Europe does not want to develop shale gas for environmental reasons, so it imports US LNG... which is mostly shale gas [1]. The US love Europe's policies... [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/surging-us-lng-exports-fuel-growth-shale-gas-production-2025-08-22/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/surging-us-lng-expor...

adrianN 1y ago
It makes sense not to invest a lot of money into fossile infrastructure when you plan to be fossile free in about twenty years.
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  Considering that the industry is highly profitable I'd say that Europe spends more importing gas than producing it locally, which would also benefit the economy and improve strategic independence. Investments in fossil fuel infrastructure still happen, too, in the form of LNG terminals.
  - ljf 1y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/opinion/environment/energy-crisis-oil-gas-fracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/opinion/environment/energ... Fracking is only profitable when oil is $120 a barrel or more.
ourmandave 1y ago
I assume they don't want fracking. Let Texas and North Dakota keep their earthquakes and polluted water tables.
seszett 1y ago
That's not especially ironic though. In doing that Europe avoids the pollution associated with shale gas exploitation. The gas itself isn't different once it is extracted, so it doesn't matter if the imported gas is shale gas or whatever else. The root problem is needing gas at all, of course.
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  The hypocrisy is that, like many other polluting industries, Europe is just sending pollution somewhere else. Then it self-congratulates on how green it is. And it pays foreign powers through the nose at the same time, and then European governments say that "there is no money". There is very little strategic thinking in Europe.
- nradov 1y ago
  If a problem has no solution then it's not really a "problem", it's just a fact to be accepted. Regardless of heat and power generation, natural gas is a crucial feedstock for manufacturing many types of chemicals. There is no conceivable future where we don't need that stuff to maintain a modern industrial civilization.
  - myrmidon 1y ago
    > Regardless of heat and power generation, natural gas is a crucial feedstock for manufacturing many types of chemicals. Maybe, but the vast majority of gas use in industry is for heat and power and electricity is a trivial substitute there. And even the direct use as process input is far from unavoidable, because in a lot of cases this use could be reduced/eliminated or shift to synthetic inputs, which would happen organically if prices shifted long-term anyway.
pandemic_region 1y ago
It makes sense from EU point of view. We'll let another continent destroy itself environmentally and leverage their output during the process. Better that destroying our own soil.
- jajko 1y ago
  We already damaged Europe in many ways, so yes what you say is true. One day US population will realize the same, but I guess things need to get worse before they start to improve.
thiago_fm 1y ago
Have you seen the environmental impact of shale gas? If the US is willing to destroy certain areas of its country in exchange for money, Europe will give them the dollars. If Europe has nobody else to do it for them, I'm sure they'll do it themselves.
GuB-42 1y ago
Also, both Europe and the US are happy to have China do the dirty jobs so that they stay clean in their countries. With the consequences we all know today in terms of dependence. Furthermore, China doesn't want to be dirty anymore, in fact they are maybe the ones who take green technologies the most seriously. So the dirtiest jobs are pushed to other countries, mostly in southeast Asia.
- llm_nerd 1y ago
  > Also, both Europe and the US are happy to have China do the dirty jobs so that they stay clean in their countries Can you give examples? What "dirty jobs" is China, and now apparently other countries, being purportedly forced to do? So is Trump really an environmentalist when he levied massive tariffs on countries in the region? No, when countries devastate their environment they do it on their own volition. China was disastrously dirty mostly due to domestic reasons like the absolute lack of pollution controls, coal burning, and so on. China introspected and decided that they wanted to be better than that (the Olympics might legitimately have been a major turning point) and have done an amazing job cleaning the country up, and many areas are now truly Western. Air quality is infinitely better...at the same time that the country is making more than ever for the rest of the world. Other countries haven't got there yet. India, the Philippines and so on have only themselves to blame for the state of their country, however self-comforting the delusion that it's really outsiders that are to blame might be.
  - altcognito 1y ago
    There are no outsiders when it comes to pollution. We get one planet. That's it. So, China is free to choose to pollute, as is Europe and the US free to choose production from a source that doesn't pollute as much. Their electrical infrastructure that is built on coal (60% of current generation) even if they've made huge improvements. Rare earth mining and building of all those electrical batteries and solar panels is a pretty dirty business. Reality is China produces a colossal amount of stuff, and much of it is pretty dirty (it would probably be dirty anywhere as that's the nature of making things at an industrial scale) Right now China seems headed in the right direction for pollution, moreso than the US. And probably the only way they end up reducing pollution completely is to grow wealthy enough to replace old methods.
Etheryte 1y ago
The environmental issues with shale gas are local, if you ignore global warming as a whole. So in that sense, not doing it in your own back yard makes a lot of sense.
- fulafel 1y ago
  Global warming is the biggest harm though so it doesn't make sense to ignore it.
  - Etheryte 1y ago
    I'm not so sure. As a whole, yes, global warming is a huge issue, but one shale gas well alone will surely have very marginal effect on that. Comparing that to the fact that it can seriously contaminate groundwater and air in your imminent vicinity seems like a more serious issue in that regard.
    - fulafel 1y ago
      A barrel of oil means about 560 kg of co2 emissions. Including the mortality cost til 2100 from emissions bumps the cost of emissions to about $145 per barrel using nrs from[1] (0.56 tons of emissions from a barrel x $260 scc per ton of emissions). I'll leave it to you to quantify the local effects and whether they are worse. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8322393/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8322393/ - they include effects only to 2100 which is way too short term IMO, should be higher
panstromek 1y ago
I don't think this is true, Europe just doesn't have these reserves. If Europe had oil and gas reserves, they would not even build gas pipelines from Russia in the first place.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Europe has 14 billion cubic metres of technically recoverable shale gas reserves.
  - panstromek 1y ago
    That's 5% of Europe's yearly consumption.
    - nradov 1y ago
      Fossil fuel reserves are not a fixed number. When prices rise, energy companies expand exploration and find more. Many areas are still basically unexplored for deep minerals. There are undrilled shale basins across western Europe, and the Black Sea and Ionian Sea have barely been tapped. Technical innovations like fracking and horizontal drilling also expand the reserves that can be economically extracted. There may be valid political and environmental reasons not to go this route but it's silly to claim that fossil fuel reserves are so limited when no one has really looked.
      - panstromek 1y ago
        From what I've read so far it seems people have really looked and we have some estimates (not yet proven reserves). The highest estimates I found are around 10-20 years of current consumption rate. That doesn't seem like a lot, and Europe's consumption is going down so it doesn't feel like this will change much for shale oil. But Norway still has big gas reserves and supplies 33% of Eueropian consumption, so I was actually wrong in the original comment and the US LNG impact is pretty overstated, it's just 15%. Most of the rest comes from middle east.
- mytailorisrich 1y ago

adrianN 1y ago

It makes sense not to invest a lot of money into fossile infrastructure when you plan to be fossile free in about twenty years.

mytailorisrich 1y ago
Considering that the industry is highly profitable I'd say that Europe spends more importing gas than producing it locally, which would also benefit the economy and improve strategic independence. Investments in fossil fuel infrastructure still happen, too, in the form of LNG terminals.
- ljf 1y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/opinion/environment/energy-crisis-oil-gas-fracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/opinion/environment/energ... Fracking is only profitable when oil is $120 a barrel or more.

ourmandave 1y ago

I assume they don't want fracking. Let Texas and North Dakota keep their earthquakes and polluted water tables.

seszett 1y ago

That's not especially ironic though. In doing that Europe avoids the pollution associated with shale gas exploitation. The gas itself isn't different once it is extracted, so it doesn't matter if the imported gas is shale gas or whatever else. The root problem is needing gas at all, of course.

mytailorisrich 1y ago
The hypocrisy is that, like many other polluting industries, Europe is just sending pollution somewhere else. Then it self-congratulates on how green it is. And it pays foreign powers through the nose at the same time, and then European governments say that "there is no money". There is very little strategic thinking in Europe.
nradov 1y ago
If a problem has no solution then it's not really a "problem", it's just a fact to be accepted. Regardless of heat and power generation, natural gas is a crucial feedstock for manufacturing many types of chemicals. There is no conceivable future where we don't need that stuff to maintain a modern industrial civilization.
- myrmidon 1y ago
  > Regardless of heat and power generation, natural gas is a crucial feedstock for manufacturing many types of chemicals. Maybe, but the vast majority of gas use in industry is for heat and power and electricity is a trivial substitute there. And even the direct use as process input is far from unavoidable, because in a lot of cases this use could be reduced/eliminated or shift to synthetic inputs, which would happen organically if prices shifted long-term anyway.

pandemic_region 1y ago

It makes sense from EU point of view. We'll let another continent destroy itself environmentally and leverage their output during the process. Better that destroying our own soil.

jajko 1y ago
We already damaged Europe in many ways, so yes what you say is true. One day US population will realize the same, but I guess things need to get worse before they start to improve.

thiago_fm 1y ago

Have you seen the environmental impact of shale gas? If the US is willing to destroy certain areas of its country in exchange for money, Europe will give them the dollars. If Europe has nobody else to do it for them, I'm sure they'll do it themselves.

GuB-42 1y ago

Also, both Europe and the US are happy to have China do the dirty jobs so that they stay clean in their countries. With the consequences we all know today in terms of dependence. Furthermore, China doesn't want to be dirty anymore, in fact they are maybe the ones who take green technologies the most seriously. So the dirtiest jobs are pushed to other countries, mostly in southeast Asia.

llm_nerd 1y ago
> Also, both Europe and the US are happy to have China do the dirty jobs so that they stay clean in their countries Can you give examples? What "dirty jobs" is China, and now apparently other countries, being purportedly forced to do? So is Trump really an environmentalist when he levied massive tariffs on countries in the region? No, when countries devastate their environment they do it on their own volition. China was disastrously dirty mostly due to domestic reasons like the absolute lack of pollution controls, coal burning, and so on. China introspected and decided that they wanted to be better than that (the Olympics might legitimately have been a major turning point) and have done an amazing job cleaning the country up, and many areas are now truly Western. Air quality is infinitely better...at the same time that the country is making more than ever for the rest of the world. Other countries haven't got there yet. India, the Philippines and so on have only themselves to blame for the state of their country, however self-comforting the delusion that it's really outsiders that are to blame might be.
- altcognito 1y ago
  There are no outsiders when it comes to pollution. We get one planet. That's it. So, China is free to choose to pollute, as is Europe and the US free to choose production from a source that doesn't pollute as much. Their electrical infrastructure that is built on coal (60% of current generation) even if they've made huge improvements. Rare earth mining and building of all those electrical batteries and solar panels is a pretty dirty business. Reality is China produces a colossal amount of stuff, and much of it is pretty dirty (it would probably be dirty anywhere as that's the nature of making things at an industrial scale) Right now China seems headed in the right direction for pollution, moreso than the US. And probably the only way they end up reducing pollution completely is to grow wealthy enough to replace old methods.

Etheryte 1y ago

The environmental issues with shale gas are local, if you ignore global warming as a whole. So in that sense, not doing it in your own back yard makes a lot of sense.

fulafel 1y ago
Global warming is the biggest harm though so it doesn't make sense to ignore it.
- Etheryte 1y ago
  I'm not so sure. As a whole, yes, global warming is a huge issue, but one shale gas well alone will surely have very marginal effect on that. Comparing that to the fact that it can seriously contaminate groundwater and air in your imminent vicinity seems like a more serious issue in that regard.
  - fulafel 1y ago
    A barrel of oil means about 560 kg of co2 emissions. Including the mortality cost til 2100 from emissions bumps the cost of emissions to about $145 per barrel using nrs from[1] (0.56 tons of emissions from a barrel x $260 scc per ton of emissions). I'll leave it to you to quantify the local effects and whether they are worse. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8322393/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8322393/ - they include effects only to 2100 which is way too short term IMO, should be higher

panstromek 1y ago

I don't think this is true, Europe just doesn't have these reserves. If Europe had oil and gas reserves, they would not even build gas pipelines from Russia in the first place.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
Europe has 14 billion cubic metres of technically recoverable shale gas reserves.
- panstromek 1y ago
  That's 5% of Europe's yearly consumption.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Fossil fuel reserves are not a fixed number. When prices rise, energy companies expand exploration and find more. Many areas are still basically unexplored for deep minerals. There are undrilled shale basins across western Europe, and the Black Sea and Ionian Sea have barely been tapped. Technical innovations like fracking and horizontal drilling also expand the reserves that can be economically extracted. There may be valid political and environmental reasons not to go this route but it's silly to claim that fossil fuel reserves are so limited when no one has really looked.
    - panstromek 1y ago
      From what I've read so far it seems people have really looked and we have some estimates (not yet proven reserves). The highest estimates I found are around 10-20 years of current consumption rate. That doesn't seem like a lot, and Europe's consumption is going down so it doesn't feel like this will change much for shale oil. But Norway still has big gas reserves and supplies 33% of Eueropian consumption, so I was actually wrong in the original comment and the US LNG impact is pretty overstated, it's just 15%. Most of the rest comes from middle east.
mytailorisrich 1y ago