Throughout Egypt, people are taking to the streets by the tens of thousands, in an apparently spontaneous act of massive civil protest. As Matthew Bova explained in the last edition of Nota Bene, “[t]he Egyptian people are demanding a host of reforms: free elections, an end to torture, the termination of repressive secret police practices, and the right to freely participate in the political process.” Similar demands have reverberated around the Arab world, in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Jordan. But for the rest of the planet, the recent bout of civil uprisings has drawn into sharp focus the security of Arabian energy sources.

Egypt, for its part, exports a negligible percentage of the world’s oil supply. Even with two percent of the world’s crude traveling through the Suez Canal, Egyptian unrest alone won’t bring the industrial world’s ability to fuel itself into question. Unrest in other nearby nations, however, could do just that. For now, the question on everybody’s mind is whether Egypt will be the last Arab country to host a major uprising in the near term, or simply the most recent link in what Iran’s supreme leader has termed an “Islamic awakening.”

In 2008, eight of the top fifteen oil-exporting nations were Arab nations, several of which maintain autocratic governments, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”). The middle- and long-term fates of these countries, including Libya, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, are now less certain than they have been in decades, if not centuries.

Enter natural gas. As of now, oil is by far the number one source of combustion energy on the planet, followed by coal. By comparison, natural gas has historically been much more difficult to obtain in substantial and economically viable quantities.

As opposed to oil, which is traded at the same price around the globe, natural gas is currently traded separately in three major markets: in North America; in Europe; and in Asia. The price of the commodity is susceptible to fluctuations in all three, resulting in a lack of uniformity in global prices. In any given market, natural gas prices tend to correspond to domestic production relative to domestic demand, as well as to the value of the gas as a fuel relative to oil and coal. It’s a system that reflects the historical realities of natural gas production. That system is on the brink of substantial change.

One thousand cubic feet of natural gas, equivalent to approximately seven gallons of diesel, currently costs around $4.00 in the United States. What’s more, natural gas produces between one-half and one-fourth the carbon emissions created by petroleum use. On these grounds alone, it is easy to see why natural gas is fast becoming a highly attractive alternative to oil.

Traditionally, energy companies exploited “conventional” sources of natural gas, usually highly porous rock formations found in and around oil reservoirs. The development and implementation of improved extraction technologies and techniques, specifically horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) are making unconventional natural gas sources, most notably “shale gas,” economically viable.

“Shale,” or fine-grain sedimentary rock formations often containing high levels of tightly packed natural gas, is being discovered and explored all across the globe—and in no small quantity in the United States. For instance, the Marcellus play, dubbed the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas,” spans Pennsylvania and much of southern New York. The EIA estimates total U.S. shale gas reserves to be at around 600 or 700 trillion cubic feet. With estimates on the rise, projections like that could make America a net exporter of natural gas while at the same time meeting all of our domestic energy needs, according to John Deutch in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs magazine.

It all sounds too good to be true: an inexpensive and efficient energy source, found domestically in massive quantities, which could revolutionize the nature of our economy, and the world at large. To be sure, there are serious concerns, particularly with the hydraulic “fracking” process utilized to reach unconventional shale gas.

When fracking, an energy company drills down into the ground, following a slight curve, such that the end of the well has a horizontal view of the shale deposit, thereby maximizing access to the gas. Small explosions, intermittently placed throughout the well, open up small fractures in the rock. Next, water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals are hydraulically pumped into the well at high pressures, propping open long cracks in the rock formation, and making the gas readily accessible to the drilling platform above. The majority of the water and chemicals pumped into the ground are not removed, but rather remain there indefinitely.

The problem is in the potential for such a procedure to damage or contaminate local water supplies and aquifers. Between three and four million gallons of water are utilized during the fracking process, and the chemicals used are, for the most part, undisclosed. Reports of high methane concentrations in water supplies and “facets spewing fire” have raised questions as to how safe fracking really is, and the impact it can have on local populations.

Energy companies have denied that the process is unsafe, but lawsuits persist, It begs the question: what is the best way to regulate fracking? How the United States chooses to regulate the natural gas industry will have major consequences as to how quickly Americans realize the benefits—and the drawbacks—of abundant natural gas resources.

George Washington Law Assistant Dean Robin Juni has been practicing as an environmental lawyer for twenty years. After receiving her J.D. at Harvard, the Dean went to work for the Department of Justice in its Environment and Natural Resources Division where she took part in the original L.E.A.F. v. E.P.A. case, a landmark case in the litigation surrounding the regulation of fracking.

“The history of hydraulic fracturing regulation is interesting,” said Dean Juni, “in that prior to 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) believed that it didn’t have the authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act (“SDWA”) to regulate the process, based on the way that the agency interpreted that statute.” Before 1997, it had been the EPA’s position that the states alone had authority to regulate fracking. As a result, regulatory frameworks varied from state to state, with shale-heavy Pennsylvania, for instance, taking a largely hands-off approach, while neighboring New York took more direct regulatory action.

That all changed, however, in 1997 when the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation, or L.E.A.F., sued the EPA for the first time (the case was followed by a related suit in 2001 and an unrelated suit in 2005). L.E.A.F. asserted that the EPA was required by the plain meaning of the SDWA to regulate fracking, specifically the process by which liquid was injected into gas wells.

“The court ultimately ruled that the EPA did have the authority to regulate the process—and that it should do so,” Dean Juni explains.“That was the law from 1997 until 2005,” when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which “affirmatively took the authority to regulate underground fracturing away from the EPA.”

With the elimination of the comprehensive federal regulatory standard environmental groups had fought for, the states effectively regained a monopoly on the authority to regulate fracking. Since then “there has been a big push to have the EPA study the issue further, but without the regulatory authority being vested in the agency, it’s hard for that study to have any teeth.”

Finding the right level of regulation comes down to balancing the social and economic perks of expanding natural gas production in America against the potential injuries such an expansion could cause. Energy companies and scientists point out that instances of such injuries are rare.

“You can argue about the data all day long,” Dean Juni said. “The question with respect to energy development in general is whether the value of the energy we’re getting out of [the resource] is worth the environmental risk.”

In Dean Juni’s view, state regulation buttressed by a federal regulatory backstop could provide an effective regulatory system. “There are a number of models for that, [such as] the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, programs which have operated pretty successfully,”she said. “Seems to me that might be a good model to follow for hydraulic fracturing as well.”

Such a system, if implemented with an eye towards the real consequences of fracking, could protect the rights of Americans living on or near natural gas resources while simultaneously encouraging safe production of a cleaner, cheaper and more stable source of energy.

While it remains to be seen whether the Federal government will reassert its regulatory authority over fracking, one thing is for certain: the rising economic potential of American natural gas will lead an expansion of production in the near future.