THE FEDERAL MULTI-AGENCY UNCONVENTIONAL OIL AND GAS RESEARCH STRATEGY

America’s abundant unconventional oil and gas (UOG) resources are vital components of our nation’s energy portfolio. To help address the many issues associated with UOG development, the major federal agencies with UOG expertise (DOE, EPA, and DOI) came together to jointly create the Federal Multiagency Collaboration on Unconventional Oil and Gas Research; A Strategy for Research and Development. This strategy, which was formulated in support of the Administration’s “all-of-the-above” energy policy, was released in July, 2014. It promotes collaboration and coordination among Federal and State agencies, academia, and industry for on-going and future, high-priority research to support safely and prudently developing onshore shale gas, tight gas, shale oil, and tight oil resources. The strategy consists of the following 7 topics related to UOG development and production: understanding the scale and nature of U.S. UOG resources; water quality; water availability; air quality and greenhouse gas emissions; effects on human health; ecological effects; and induced seismicity. Results of this research are intended to be used by the full range of decision makers associated with UOG development, including Federal, State, Tribal, local governments, industry, NGO’s, and the public-at-large. Major UOG research results to date by the three agencies include: improved understanding of the impacts on drinking water resources; reduced risk of groundwater contamination through improved wellbore design; commercialized techniques in use by industry to reduce and reuse produced water; improved methods for detecting wastewater spills; improved ability to relate specific seismic activity to UOG operations; enhanced methods for measuring air quality and emissions; remote sensing techniques to quantify land-use-change and evaluate potential ecological impacts; and improved estimates of undiscovered, technically-recoverable UOG resources.