In 2011, President Obama released his Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, which called for an all of the above energy strategy, including the expansion of safe and responsible oil and gas development. As a follow up to his energy blueprint, the President issued an Executive Order which established an interagency working group to meet these goals. He called on this group to: coordinate agency policy activities; coordinate the sharing of scientific, environmental and other technical information; engage in long term planning in the areas of research, natural resource assessment, and the development of infrastructure; and promote interagency communication with stakeholders.

The interagency group, which includes the U.S. Departments of Energy (DOE) and Interior (DOI) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a multi-agency program whose goals were to address the highest priority challenges with safely developingunconventional shale gas and tight oil resources. Specifically, the program looked to focus on timely, policy relevant science directed to research topics where collaboration among DOE, DOI and EPA can be done to provide results and technologies that support sound policy decisions.

The multi-year research plan was released in July, 2014 and identified several research areas to pursue. These included: understanding the scale and nature of U.S. oil and gas resources; water quality and availability; air quality and greenhouse gas emissions; impacts on human health; ecological impacts; and induced seismicity. The research plan also presented six cross cutting projects. These include:

• understanding resource volumes, potential scale of future drilling activity, and water consumption in representative unconventional oil and gas (UOG) plays;
• study of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on drinking water resources;
• understanding and managing risks from unconventional oil and gas development of water resources;
• application of source and remote emission measurement methods to quantification of air from UOG operations;
• water and UOG development: ecological effects of wastewater and water withdrawal.
• induced seismicity, implications of UOG activities.

The President’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget request reflects many of these priorities. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is requesting $14.5 million for activities related to national oil and gas resources. This is approximately $2 million over FY 2015 enacted levels and will include funding to carry out some of the research called for in the interagency plan. Specific projects that USGS references include:

• the development of assessments or both domestic (including resources on federal lands) and global oil and gas resources including tight gas, tight oil, shale gas, and coalbed gas;
• a continuation of ongoing assessments of the Barnett Shale, the Monterey Formation, the Mancos Shale, and the Cline Shale;
• a comparison of the characteristics and impacts of unconventional gas development in Pennsylvania and New York; it would also include an investigation of baseline water quality and produced water disposal in both states as a life cycle analysis;
• research on reserve growth in existing oil and gas fields;
• in-depth studies of the geology and oil and gas resources on Alaska’s North Slope, including the potential for gas hydrates;
• information sharing with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for outer continental shelf assessments;
• support for studies that apply cutting edge research to critical issues impacting UOG resources.

In DOE’s budget request, the agency notes that it will focus on developing technologies that reduce the surface and subsurface footprint, emissions, and water use to ensure the safe development of unconventional domestic natural gas resources. A top priority will be to develop new technologies to detect and mitigate methane emissions from natural gas transmission, distribution and storage facilities as well as to communicate results to stakeholders. The DOE FY 2016 budget proposes an increase of $18.9 million for these activities, although it cuts funding for the unconventional fossil technologies from petroleum – oil technologies program. Methane hydrate research is also zeroed out.

EPA also mentions the interagency research plan in its FY 2016 budget request as part of its research for its goal of addressing climate change and improving air quality, but does not elaborate on specific projects.