One of the world's new alternative energy sources, shale gas production is led by US since 1995. Even though Turkey has a certain amount of shale gas reserves, it has to wait a while longer to benefit fully from these sources . Energy factor has great importance in the development of countries and the diversification requirement of energy sources other than hydrocarbons is expressed frequently in recent years. The share of energy sector in Turkey’s imports in 2012 is about 60 billion dollars with a 27 percent and Turkey’s dependence on foreign oil and petroleum product sources is 92 percent. Considering developing countries such as Turkey, the need of energy in large amounts leads to obligation of leaning to alternative sources. FRACTURING METHOD According to the sources of natural gas that found, the content changes from methane to ethane and propane. If the gas is produced from sandstone layers it is named ‘tight gas’, if produced from coal layers it is named ‘coal gas’ and finally when it is produced from clay layer it’s named ‘shale gas’. During shale gas fracturing, the clay layers are being vertical drilled with a classical method. Following this, an average of 1500 meters of horizontal probe is made in a slightly inclined, argillaceous layer which contains hydrocarbon gas. Horizontal and vertical fractures appear inside of the drilled parts and approximately 25 fractures are being made in one well. Each fracturing range supposed to be around 40 meters. With perforated pipes lowered into the borehole, drilling depleted sand, a special gel and other liquids are being injected into clay layers. Sand is used in order to keep the cracks open and ensure the continuity of gas flow. While cost of each well fracturing operation vary depending upon the depth and the formation pressure, the well can be placed in every half a square kilometer. Each time, the cost of this operation changes between 200 and 500 thousand U.S. dollars. BEING IMPLEMENTED SINCE 1995 World’s first shale gas well was opened in 1981 in Texas, America. Starting from 1995, shale gas production significantly began to increase with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing method and 15 thousand 500 wells opened for shale gas exploration only in America, until the end of 2010. Currently, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 187 Tcm ( 6,600 Tcf ) world shale gas reserves found and it is discovered that 163 Tcm ( 5,760 Tcf ) of the total amount is producible gas. Shale gas reserves in the world located in respectively, China (36 trillion cubic meters ), U.S. ( 24.3 trillion cubic meters ), Argentina ( 21.8 trillion cubic meters ), Mexico ( 19.2 trillion cubic meters ) and South Africa (13 , 7 trillion cubic meters ). It is estimated that the shale gas reserves in Europe are in Poland (5.3 trillion cubic meters), France (5.1 trillion cubic meters), Sweden ( 1.2 trillion cubic meters) Denmark (0.7 trillion cubic meters), Ukraine (0.6 trillion in cubic meters) and Netherlands (0.5 trillion cubic meters). IT PROVIDES US’ ENERGY INDEPENDENCE As the first country discovered the shale gas, America’s share of shale gas production contained only 4 percent of total gas production in 2005, however his number currently increased to 25. While importing 100 Bcm of LNG each year between 2000-2010, this number decreased to 20 bcm in 2011, which means that, because of shale gas LNG import is reduced by %80. Also, America’s currently producible shale gas reserves correspond to 24 tcm and that makes possible to cover its own gas needs for approximately about 100 to 150 years without imports. By using this data, it seems that shale gas provides America’s energy independence and unfortunately most of other countries are not that lucky. SOUTHEAST ANATOLIA AND TRAKYA HAVE POTENTIAL According to studies that have been made on the potential of shale gas in Turkey in recent years, shale gas and oil is detected in Southeastern Anatolia and Thrace and possibly in Salt Lake and Sivas Basin. In the research TAPG has done, presence of shale gas oil fields have been detected especially in Diyarbakır, Erzurum and Thrace. Turkish Petroleum International Company (TPIC)’s studies with Shell Upstream Turkey B. V. shows that small sized reserves in Thrace wasn’t touched but first shale gas drilling have started in Konacık between Diyarbakır and Batman and in Sarıbuğday erea of Elazığ. Up to positive results in ongoing operations Shell is expected to open over 20 wells. In the “World Resource Rocks “report published by The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2011, Turkey’s removable shale gas reserves were around 424 billion cubic meters. This number has reached to 700 billion cubic meters today. need tıme to produce According to the results of studies and expert reviews, for Turkey to achieve profitable way of shale gas production, a period of nearly 10 years is needed. In other words, Turkey will not be able to benefit shale gas in the near future. President of TAPG İsmail Bahtiyar stated that, “Oil and gas exploration in its nature a field that requires a lot of time and money. We can’t say that we have commercially producible gas reserves proven to be existed currently. But the operations will continue in order to find it. We only have to wait a while longer”. However, in order to meet natural gas supply and demand which will occur in the future, the number and capacity of the LNG plant and LNG storage facilities must be increased. CAN STRENGTHEN TURKEY’S ENERGY STRATEGY Although renewable energy sources are on the front burner, still a large part of global energy demand is met by burning fossil. At this point, in terms of sustainability in the fight against global warming, different energy sources are still needed. Increased production of shale gas on a global scale can be expected as an differentiation in natural gas trade. Also, planned for the transportation of natural gas over long distances, LNG liquefaction and gasification plants projects can be expected to be put forward. Likely to be experienced in the world natural gas market, together with the change of the production of shale gas developments in Turkey, new implementations are expected to increase in the coming days. The start and expansion of shale gas production will strengthen Turkey and provide lots of benefits in terms of energy security.