Although gas prices are temporarily low at the pump, long-term energy costs are on the rise. According to State of the World 2015 contributing author Nathan John Hagens, a former hedge fund manager who teaches human macro-ecology at the University of Minnesota, nations are papering over those costs with debt. Higher energy costs are leading to continued recessions, excess claims on future natural resources, and more-severe social inequality and poverty.

The transportation sector is moving away from oil slowly but surely. Driven by growth in the use of biofuels and natural gas, non-petroleum energy now makes up the highest percentage of total fuel consumption for transport since 1954, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The U.S. plastics industry is expected to grow rapidly over the next decade, fueled by cheap and abundant shale natural gas that's made it more competitive with overseas markets, according to a report by economists at the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

Shifting from diesel fuel to natural gas to power the nation's heavy-duty commercial trucking sector would achieve widely promised climate benefits only if widespread emissions of heat-trapping methane across the natural gas value chain are reduced, according to a new study coauthored by researchers from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Just as southern California is the nation's top magnet for containerized cargo, so is the Gulf Coast the most attractive hub for movements of petrochemicals. Led by Houston and New Orleans, petrochemical activity is thriving due in no small part to growth in refining activity and an abundance of cheap natural gas.

Fracking through the "shale gas revolution" created an economic boost during a time the economy needed all the help it could get, according to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Fracking boosted the economy by $48bn per year between 2007-13, according to the study's authors: Catherine Hausman and Ryan Kellogg of the University of Michigan.

The United States is on track to saturate the global energy market with liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports by as early as this year, putting itself on course to become one of the world's largest LNG suppliers.