The Shale Revolution

Even big oil companies say solar and wind will be the energy of the future. But while we wait, the energy of the present is being transformed — for better and for worse — by technologies that unlock fuel from underground rocks known as shale. A tsunami of oil and gas from the technique called fracking has made the U.S. the world’s biggest producer of both, giving the country the energy independence its leaders have sought for decades and upending the geopolitics of the world energy trade. At