Wes Lohec
Chevron Vice President for Health, Environment and Safety
Why is natural gas from shale important to Chevron and world energy supplies?
Natural gas from shale is dramatically changing the gas supply landscape in the United States—boosting reserves and providing a supply of safe, clean, affordable energy.
It is the fastest-growing source of natural gas in the United States and could become a major global energy source. Natural gas from shale has grown to about 25 percent of U.S. gas production in just a decade, and according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, it will be nearly 50 percent by 2035.
The development of this resource is creating thousands of jobs, improving energy security and lowering GHG emissions from electricity production.
Our U.S. investments have positioned us to become a leading developer of domestic shale gas. We also are exploring opportunities to develop natural gas from shale in Canada and central Europe.
What challenges does Chevron face?
Perhaps the biggest challenge is also our biggest opportunity—to improve community awareness and understanding about how we operate.
The discussion of natural gas from shale has been clouded by complex, conflicting and sometimes inaccurate information about the technologies we use.
Every day we work to build trust with communities and other stakeholders, knowing that trust can come only from operating safely and responsibly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
How is Chevron addressing these challenges?
Chevron may be new to the Marcellus Shale, but we have been using and advancing the foundation technologies for decades. From the day we acquired Atlas Energy, we have focused on applying our Operational Excellence Management System (OEMS) to our Marcellus operations.
This starts with our robust well design and drilling practices. We focus on water management, including working to recycle most of the water we use onsite. This reduces our freshwater consumption as well as our need for trucking and disposal. All of these practices aim to manage our environmental footprint and the impact of our activities on the community.
Stakeholder and community engagement is another core component of our OEMS. We are learning from local communities about their concerns and sharing information about our operations. In addition, we are committed to disclosing the chemical additives for all our new gas wells in the Marcellus Shale on the publicly available FracFocus website.
Updated: May 2012