A venture capital firm needed to understand the technology needs in emerging shale gas basins to prioritize investments and manage market risk.
The client
A regional venture capital firm was interested in funding start-ups focused on developing technologies for exploiting shale gas basins.
The situation
The client sought a market-backed understanding of technology needs in two or three emerging shale gas basins to prioritize investments and manage market risk.
ADI’s contributions
Primary research
We conducted approximately 40 interviews with industry experts across the shale gas exploration, production, and utilization value chain.
Insight distillation
The insights gathered from the interviews were distilled to identify the key operational and technology pains and needs within the industry.
Prioritization
We segmented and prioritized the identified technology challenges by basin and basin growth data.
Market sizing
We sized the potential revenue associated with each technology challenge to quantify the market opportunity.
Key outcomes
- The resulting technology needs and evaluation framework are being rolled out to investment professionals and are being used to generate, evaluate, seed, and fund new opportunities.
More insights
What recent M&A reveals about the catalyst industry
The catalyst industry is entering a new phase, with 2026 marking a period of significant portfolio realignment and expansion into adjacent catalyst technologies and services across refining, petrochemical, polymer, and emissions-control markets. The transactions shown in Exhibit 1 highlight a broader shift in how companies are positioning themselves across the catalyst value chain. For instance, […]
What will it take to scale geothermal?
Geothermal is attracting more attention than at any point in recent decades. Fervo’s IPO brought public-market attention to enhanced geothermal systems, and Quaise’s recent $134 million Series B first close showed continued investor appetite for superhot geothermal and millimeter-wave drilling. Developers are improving drilling performance, stimulation design, reservoir modeling, subsurface monitoring, and project execution. Oil […]
Bulk liquid storage is shifting from capacity to capability
Liquid bulk storage operators are entering a more selective growth cycle. Demand remains resilient across fuels, chemicals, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas liquids (NGLs), biofuels, ammonia, and methanol. Increasingly, value is shifting toward terminals that can handle a broader range of products, connect to major trade routes, and generate higher returns from existing assets. […]