Liam Denning, Columnist

Where to Frack Next: La La Land

A newfound shale discipline that actually jibes with the industry’s traditional ESG adversaries sounds like fantasy, but it’s there for the taking.

June 8, 2021 at 11:00 AM UTC

By Liam Denning

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

It’s no mirage.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America

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Are the frackers already in La La Land?

I don’t mean that in quite the same way the Saudi Arabian energy minister did last week when he dissed the International Energy Agency’s net-zero emissions report. U.S. oil and gas producers aren’t planning to stop drilling new oilfields altogether. But they are definitely drilling less than previously — a lot less. And that owes at least something to the ESG thing. It owes something to the Saudi Arabian energy minister, too.