Law Commons^™

By 2015, the United States is poised to overtake the world’s current top producer of natural gas, Russia, due to the abundance of American shale gas, located in plays such as the now-familiar Marcellus Shale, which encompasses parts of New York, Pennsylvania, and certain Appalachian states and the Barnett Shale, located in North Texas. The recent rise in shale gas development is due mostly to the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (also referred to as fracing, fracking, and hydrofracking) technologies. The combination of these separate, but established, technologies allows for economic shale gas production. This Article describes these …

A monopoly is nothing but a magician’s trick—an illusion where producers artificially control supply to maintain the perception of scarcity. While the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has successfully maintained control over crude oil prices, the question arises whether a similar organization will form to control the natural gas market. Monopolies are not a new international or domestic phenomenon. During the late nineteenth century in South Africa, DeBeers founder Cecil Rhodes recognized that if diamonds became commonplace their value would decrease substantially. The diamond industry was consolidated under Rhodes’s influence, and the international diamond cartel has since regulated the …