The changing landscape of the North American unconventional gas is causing the industry and forcing the federal government to examine how to best regulate the business, a panel discussed Wednesday at IHS CERAWeek. “The economic benefits of natural gas is substantial,” stated Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Company, “the environmental benefits of creating natural gas is a topic that is often debatable between the industry and some communities.” As the production of natural gas increasingly plays a vital role in North America’s energy future, the environmental impacts and regulatory safeguards are viewed as major challenges and is a process that the industry fine tunes as it moves forward, commented Odum. Both state and federal government continue to develop and strengthen regulations to address some of these impacts, the panel stated, but the two major concerns from a citizen standpoint are air pollution and methane emissions, […]