Petroleum Truth Report: David Hughes Weighs In on The Fracking Fallacy Debate.
In the current debate about the Nature article “The Fracking Fallacy,” the discussion has focused on estimates of cumulative production of shale gas plays by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas (UT/BEG).
David Hughes provides another estimate in his recent post “Fracking Fracas: The Trouble with Optimistic Shale Gas Projections by the U.S. Department of Energy,” a summary of his comprehensive study of all U.S. shale plays Drilling Down published by The Post Carbon Institute.
The Fracking Fallacy debate is important because it casts doubt on the reliability of government estimates of our natural gas supply. If U.S. gas production is in decline by the early 2020s as described in the Nature article, or sooner as I suspect, then important policy decisions about the export of natural gas and the retirement of coal-fired electric power plants have been based on questionable information.
Cumulative production estimates are interesting but do not address the economics of shale plays. Proven reserves provide a more meaningful estimate because they supposedly represent volumes of oil and gas that can be produced commercially at a particular price.
