China's accelerated political and economic changes since the emergence of Mao in the mid 20th century, colored by nearly a five-thousand-year-old culture and accentuated by centuries of unique history, have driven the once backward nation into one of the world's leading economic superpowers. A Confucian culture that includes hard work and non-questioning authority has contributed in a major way. Above all, China has been able to accomplish economic stardom without restorting to other nations' tendencies of militarism, such as the United States, wartime Japan, and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and has opted for a softer voice and patience rather than brutish machismo. China wants to be liked rather than feared, wants to be accepted than despised. This includes all its actions from foreign policy to the staging of the Olympics to the covering up of glitches and unpleasant events. Although China's ascend on the world stage is assured, a hurdle that has the potential to become its chokepoint is the fact that the country has few indigenous energy sources, other that highly polluting coal, in a world of galloping consumption with dwindling exhaustable resources. In order to tackle this challenge of finite energy, China will have to muster its own resources and shirk its need for world popularity and acceptance, embark on a number of tough and perhaps internationally unpopular tasks while retaining its responsibility to its own people and, to a large extent, the rest of the world.

Energy: China's Choke Point

Michael J. Economides

Xina Xie

Energy Tribune Publishing Inc.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has taken a giant step backwards into its Soviet past, and nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of energy politics. Modern Russian politics and energy sources first oil and then both oil and gas have been inextricably connected in a way unmatched by any other major power in the history of the world. This time, however, the state is bare, without the fig leaf of legitimacy that its communist ideology once offered. One reason for Putin s overwhelming popularity at home, is that he has tapped into Russia s two strong yearnings: a cultural affinity for strong, Tsar-like leadership quite different from Western European and North American predilections and an understandable hunger for prestige and world recognition a need to be relevant. In the course of 15 years, the Russian people saw their country go from superpower to junior partner, and then, thanks to Putin, through renaissance of power. Putin s sojourn has not been on the back of nuclear weapons which the country still owns in abundance but has been fueled by oil and gas. What Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev could not do with nuclear weapons and raw military power, Putin has attempted with oil and gas, in what can arguably be called energy imperialism.

From Soviet to Putin and Back

Donna Marie D'Aleo

Natural gas is rapidly emerging as a premier fuel for the world economy with markedly increasing trans-national trade. With proven reserves far exceeding those for crude oil, natural gas is likely to be around for centuries. This is a book about enhancing natural gas production using one of the most important and widespread well completion technologies hydraulic fracturing. The book addresses the way that natural gas is produced from reservoirs and then describes diagnostic techniques that can pinpoint whether the well is producing as it should or whether intervention should be undertaken, which is the central theme of this book. Hydraulic fracturing is introduced as the solution of choice, showing the idiosyncratic nature of natural gas wells compared to oil wells. Subsequent chapters address important peripheral issues whose successful or failed resolution may affect the well performance with equal or even more serious consequences than the fracture treatment itself. These issues include well completions and the extremely important well-to-reservoir (and fracture) connectivity. Moving onwards, two chapters address the materials for fracturing: fluids and proppants. Their appropriate selection is essential to the successful execution of any treatment. The execution itself is the subject of the following chapter, and practical issues are addressed therein. Then some modern applications are described. One chapter deals with fracturing horizontal wells, increasingly an important option among reservoir exploitation strategies. Not only new well architecture but also newer reservoir targets are opening up, and natural gas demand points towards unconventional sources, namely coalbed methane (CBM), shale gas and very low-permeability formations. Technology makes their exploitation possible, and this is the subject another chapter. Finally, two issues round out the book: How fracturing is employed in the full development of reservoirs; and how mature fields, a mainstay of the developed world such as the United States and Europe, can be revitalized through this process.

Modern Fracturing - Enhancing Natural Gas Production

MACK

GUPTA

Hawkes

Baumgartner

Schein

ROSS

Valko

BRANNON

PEARSON

MALONE

WANG

MartÍn

Bachman

KING

Hlidek

Economides

Weijers

LaFollette

Wolcott

Demarchos

Rylance

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