Business Landscape for Unconventional Natural Gas

In the last few years the energy landscape in the United States has been revolutionized by technological innovations in natural gas drilling. However, while the U.S. is busy developing its unconventional resources, most other countries have not yet begun significant commercial or even exploratory development of their unconventional natural gas resources. And despite the challenges that can be identified for countries that seek to replicate the success of the U.S., there exist major opportunities for investors interested in unconventional natural gas markets.

To assess the ability to develop such unconventional resources and therefore their investment potential, this capstone analyzes and attempts to answer a few key questions about the availability and feasibility of unconventional gas development within six countries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Poland and the UK.

In short, by focusing on technical issues like resource stock and water availability to social issues like political and social opposition, as well as market dynamics, the report creates a simple matrix of key themes across five categories; namely regulations, politics, markets, geology and infrastructure. A scenario analysis is then conducted using this research to illustrate potential attractive or disruptive business environments and highlight significant indicators that will cause or precede changes to the industry. The scenario analysis serves to determine which indicators and variables are at the root of a strong or weak business environment for unconventional gas. Based on this work, final recommendations are made to Crédit Agricole to continue observing these variables as indications of changes in the investment landscape.