{"id":3509,"date":"2014-12-24T13:31:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T18:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3509"},"modified":"2014-12-24T13:31:25","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T18:31:25","slug":"fracking-fracas-the-trouble-with-optimistic-shale-gas-projections-by-the-u-s-department-of-energy-post-carbon-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3509","title":{"rendered":"Fracking Fracas: The Trouble with Optimistic Shale Gas Projections by the U.S. Department of Energy Post Carbon Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fracking Fracas: The Trouble with Optimistic Shale Gas Projections by the U.S. Department of Energy Post Carbon Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On December 3, 2014,\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0published \u201cNatural Gas: The Fracking Fallacy\u201d<\/a>, which suggested that the forecasts of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for four major U.S. shale gas plays were wildly optimistic, based on a comparison to forecasts for the same plays by the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology (UT\/BEG). This was followed by\u00a0a formal denunciation<\/a>\u00a0of the article both by the EIA and UT\/BEG, despite the fact that the substance of the article was correct. Arthur Berman provided\u00a0an excellent overview<\/a>\u00a0of the merits\u2014or in this case the lack thereof\u2014of the attack by both of these agencies on what is essentially the reality behind the shale revolution.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Nature\u00a0<\/em>piece steered clear of any discussion of my recent\u00a0Drilling Deeper<\/a><\/em>\u00a0report (published by Post Carbon Institute), which looked at twelve major shale gas and tight oil plays accounting for most of U.S. shale production, and which also came to the conclusion that the EIA\u2019s projections were extremely optimistic.\u00a0Nature<\/em>focused instead on the four plays described in two published and two unpublished studies by UT\/BEG. TheNature<\/em>\u00a0article sparked a lot of media attention, which prompted the EIA and UT\/BEG to issue rebuttals.<\/p>\n

The argument of the EIA and UT\/BEG that their projections of shale gas production from the plays mentioned in the\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0article are fundamentally similar is untrue, given the publicly available data. The implications of the EIA being wrong on its projections of cheap and abundant gas for decades are considerable, given that investment decisions are now being made based on these projections\u2014 including construction of infrastructure for LNG exports, gas-fired generation and even crude oil exports. Hence it is worthwhile to examine the EIA\u2019s optimistic projections in more detail in light of the projections available from UT\/BEG and the\u00a0Drilling Deeper<\/em>report (DD).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fracking Fracas: The Trouble with Optimistic Shale Gas Projections by the U.S. Department of Energy Post Carbon Institute. On December 3, 2014,\u00a0Nature\u00a0published \u201cNatural Gas: The Fracking Fallacy\u201d, which suggested that the forecasts of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for four major U.S. shale gas plays were wildly optimistic, based on a comparison to forecasts for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[251,267,548,722],"class_list":["post-3509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-eia","tag-energy-information-administration","tag-nat-gas","tag-shale-gas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3510,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509\/revisions\/3510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}