From a forecast $500 million commitment by Australian shale-gas explorers last June, US investment bank Morgan Stanley expects $1 billion to be invested. That is a number even the most sceptical of observers of shale gas cannot ignore.
Driving the Australian rush into shale is a combination of factors, including strong local gas prices, and concern about a future energy shortage because too much of Australia's gas is being committed to Asian customers.
However, the real factor underpinning the shale-gas hunt in Australia is a realisation that the geology bears remarkable similarities to the US - and that flow testing on its first two shale-gas wells by Beach Petroleum has answered the question of permeability.
All that is needed is more drilling, more fracture testing, and more capital - and all three of those essential inputs are on their way.
So, what will a shale gas revolution mean to Australia, even if it is in slow motion when compared to events in the US?
Oodles, is the non-technical answer to that question, with time the big unknown.
Morgan Stanley energy analyst Stuart Baker almost agrees with The Slug's oodles assessment, though being a prudent chap he is withholding his final judgment, telling The Australian last week that he could not answer the question about Australia being a "shale gas mirror image" of the US.
"We know the rocks are there," Baker said. "What we don't know is whether they will respond to artificial stimulation and whether they will flow at the rates required."
Yes, we do. Beach has already provided the best demonstration possible at its Holdfast and Encounter shale-gas wells in the Cooper Basin. It achieved such high flow rates that it has booked a few trillion cubic feet of probable gas reserves from a small portion of its tenements.
Other tests loom, but it is the Beach results that have done more than anything else to answer the question about Australian shales showing similar characteristics to US shales.
To best understand where Australia is heading with its shale gas hunt it is worth looking back to what was said in the name of another Baker - James A. Baker III to be precise. That is the name of the public policy school at Houston's Rice University, the academic home for Amy Myers Jaffe, the woman who led the US shale charge exactly two years ago.
Back in May, 2010, when The Slug was fortunate to be visiting Rice and the Baker Institute, Jaffe shook the world of oil and government with a dramatic report republished in The Wall Street Journal about how "shale gas will rock the world".
Today, it is possible that even Jaffe would be surprised by how correct she was with predictions of shale gas "preventing the rise of new [oil and gas] cartels, altering geopolitics and slowing the transition to renewable energy".
Everything she predicted has come true, albeit earlier than she expected.
The cost of exploring for shale gas has tumbled. The price of gas has crashed. Countries that imported gas are becoming exporters. Members of the OPEC cartel are fretting about future prices. Even Russia is shivering in its fur-lined boots as its major gas customer, Europe, looks to its own shale-gas production and cheaper cargoes of LNG.
"Not only will the shale discoveries prevent a [gas] cartel from forming, but the petro-states will lose lots of the muscle they now have in world affairs, as customers over time cut them loose and turn to cheaper fuel produced closer to home," Jaffe wrote.
"The shale boom is also likely to upend the economics of renewable energy. It may be a lot harder to persuade people to adopt green power that needs heavy subsidies when there is cheap, plentiful fuel out there that's a lot cleaner than coal."
Oh boy! How spot on was that assessment of two years ago. More to the point, how insightful into the new world of abundant gas which is changing the way industry acts (hence the doubled Australian shale exploration budget), and how shale gas could derail the best laid green-energy plans of the federal government.
While lacking both Jaffe's intellectual firepower and highly-polished crystal ball, what The Slug can see unfolding in Australia is a process of shale-gas discovery, development, and the unwinding of the politically-inspired Clean Energy Finance Corporation that is about to consume $10 billion of taxpayer funds to promote renewable energy of all sorts, especially solar and wind.
What is the future of those green energy dreams, without massive government subsidies, when the Australian shale gas revolution dawns, gas prices plunge (as they have in the US), and taxpayers and their political masters are faced with a stark choice?
Not much is the answer, as the high-cost dreams face the reality of cheap gas.
