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Russia’s PM does not rule out larger scale revolution in energy sector than ‘shale’ one

The official referred to the development of motors, hybrid and hydrogen engines

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. Efficiency of shale energy turned to be higher than expected and one cannot rule out even larger scale revolution in this sphere on the account of developments of motors and hydrogen engines, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday in the article published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

"Neither should one ignore opportunities for dramatic performance improvement of the solar energy, whose prospects were skeptically assessed earlier, and the unflagging activity in development of motors, hybrid and hydrogen engines. If progress in these areas continues with the same pace and oil prices do not plunge deeper, the world may be challenged by a revolution of even greater scale than the ‘shale’ one," the prime minister said.

Liquefied natural gas transportation already starts uniting earlier isolated markets of different companies, the prime minister said. Production of shale hydrocarbons turns fuel importers into exporters, he added. As a result, work of hundreds small innovation companies in this sphere "influences now on this market [and on the economy of many nations at large] even stronger than the largest energy corporations do,’ the prime minister said.

"Furthermore, these companies are demonstrating fairly high stability so far: nearly threefold oil price drop did not result in their mass bankruptcy. Certainly, the situation may change if prices continue falling. Nevertheless, efficiency of new technologies turned out to be much higher than many expected. This is a serious lesson: one should not stubbornly argue the Earth continues standing on three pillars if outlines of the fourth one are already clearly visible," Medvedev said.