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The market structure of shale gas drilling in the United States / Zhongmin Wang &#38; Qing Xue. Washington : Resources dfor the Future, September 2014, 11 p. (RFF Discussion Paper 14-31)http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-14-31.pdfAbstract (© RFF) :This paper provides the first empirical study of the market structure of the shale gas drilling industry in the United States. Modern shale gas drilling, which is a major revolution in the energy industry, was highly concentrated during its experimental stage, roughly from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, and has since become less concentrated, exhibiting a long tail of infrequent drillers. Nevertheless, even during the latter stage, the vast majority of shale gas wells have been drilled by a limited number of large independent oil and gas producers.