The Semantic Web and Shale Gas may seem like strange bedfellows. It may also come as a surprise that the United States has more gas reserves than the rest of the world combined, but most of it is locked up in immense and well known shale gas fields stretching for hundreds of miles at a depth of about 10,000 feet. These clean burning resources were considered junk until technologies for horizontal drilling and fracturing the rock under high pressure made them viable, however these techniques are expensive and poorly understood. Semantic web technologies enable companies to pool knowledge, collaborate, and gain a shared understanding of what works and what doesn't. This accelerated the "learning curve" to reduce risks and increases profits. The more flexible representation enables deep auditing of decision processes by tracking data provenance. It also integrates disparate data sources, facilitates collaborative data fusion, collaborative modeling, and is able to forecast the results of decisions based on physics and the evolving understanding. This system built on semantic web is expected to be processing thousands of wells by the end of 2011 and be used by over 20 independent and major oil and gas companies. The ability to unlock shale gas will have a major impact on the United States Economy for 50 to 100 years, freeing dependency on foreign oil and, providing clean burning fossil fuels.
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