In a 2017 Forbes article, writer Robert Rapier escorted the magazine’s audience on a fascinating tour of “How the Shale Boom Turned the World Upside Down”. If you recall, the nation’s oil and gas production had long ago peaked with conventional drilling and by 2005, we were in a full-blown energy crisis highly dependent on Venezuela and Saudi Arabia oil imports. And natural gas? Well, the only solution here with certainty according to one energy investor was “to pray.” ...

Reese Energy Consulting today is studying the use of drones to ensure the integrity of our nation’s pipelines. While aerial platforms have been used for some time to record ground data, Colorado-based SolSpec is working to develop a way to fly drones or even small airplanes for longer distances and inspect hundreds of miles of pipelines in a single pass....