Real options investments: Lessons from the US shale gas industry

Using detailed project-level investment data from the U.S. upstream natural gas industry, we examine the effect of the unexercised real options on individual firms’ real options investments. Drilling an unconventional well is a real options investment that is exercised by fracturing and completing the drilled well at an opportune time. We find a small negative but statistically significant effect of the number of unexercised options on real options investments. There is also a significant difference in the effect of unexercised real options on real options investment decisions of publicly traded and privately held firms.