In an article in the Economic Times, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar argues how new technology is helping economically extract gas from shale rock, which in turn promises to revolutionise both the world energy scene and global geopolitics. Russia, Iran and Opec are going to be greatly weakened, while the US, Europe and China will be greatly strengthened. India can be a major beneficiary....some countries may start converting their transport fleets into gas-based ones, hitting the demand for and prices of petrol and diesel. Fourth, converting gas into oil will become economic. ...Shale has long been known to contain natural gas, but this was not worth extracting with conventional technology. Now a new technology, ‘fracking' , plus horizontal drilling, have greatly increased shale gas productivity, so extraction is now viable at $3-4 /mmbtu. The new technology has been pioneered in the US so successfully that the US has overtaken Russia as the world's biggest gas producer. US gas...