{"id":49555,"date":"2019-11-12T09:31:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T14:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49555"},"modified":"2019-11-12T09:31:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-12T14:31:27","slug":"david-hughes-shale-reality-check-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49555","title":{"rendered":"David Hughes\u2019 Shale Reality Check 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2019-11-12\/david-hughes-shale-reality-check-2019\/\">David Hughes\u2019 Shale Reality Check 2019<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/SRC2019-post_feature-RES.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>1.9 million. 13 trillion. 10 billion.<\/strong>&nbsp;These are the numbers that jumped off the page when I read PCI Fellow&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.postcarbon.org\/our-people\/david-hughes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">David Hughes<\/a>\u2019s latest<a href=\"https:\/\/www.postcarbon.org\/publications\/shale-reality-check-2019\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;\u201cshale reality check\u201d report<\/a>&nbsp;on the U.S. government\u2019s forecasts of domestic oil and gas production. To elaborate, these forecasts mean that by 2050:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>9 million<\/strong>&nbsp;new oil and gas wells will need to be drilled;<\/li><li><strong>$13 trillion<\/strong>&nbsp;will need to be spent to drill all those wells; and<\/li><li><strong>10 billion<\/strong>&nbsp;barrels of tight oil production will be \u201cmissing\u201d from shale plays to meet the reference case forecast for cumulative production.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These are just some of the crazy numbers behind the Energy Information Administration\u2019s (EIA)&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/outlooks\/aeo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">latest forecasts<\/a>&nbsp;for U.S. oil and gas production through 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every year, the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/outlooks\/aeo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">EIA releases a new forecasts<\/a>&nbsp;of domestic energy in the coming decades. These forecasts\u2014specifically the \u201creference case\u201d\u2014are virtually taken to the bank by policymakers, investors, and the mainstream media as the most likely scenario of future production, consumption, and prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This despite the fact that they are very often wrong and vary tremendously from year to year. Or the fact that for several years now David Hughes has published \u201creality checks\u201d on the forecasts of tight oil and shale gas production (extracted through \u201cfracking\u201d) found in the&nbsp;<em>Annual Energy Outlook<\/em>\u2014reality checks that have consistently shown that the EIA\u2019s projections are, to be polite, extremely optimistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hughes\u2019s latest report evaluates the EIA\u2019s reference case forecasts for the top tight oil and shale gas plays (accounting for roughly 90% of production) against:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>current and historical production;<\/li><li>the number of producing wells;<\/li><li>the decline rates for wells and fields;<\/li><li>the distribution of wells in terms of their quality;<\/li><li>definition of the relatively limited \u201csweet spot\u201d areas in each play; and<\/li><li>the projected number of wells, well density, and money required to meet the EIA\u2019s forecasts.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Hughes\u2019 Shale Reality Check 2019 1.9 million. 13 trillion. 10 billion.&nbsp;These are the numbers that jumped off the page when I read PCI Fellow&nbsp;David Hughes\u2019s latest&nbsp;\u201cshale reality check\u201d report&nbsp;on the U.S. government\u2019s forecasts of domestic oil and gas production. To elaborate, these forecasts mean that by 2050: 9 million&nbsp;new oil and gas wells will [&hellip;]<\/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":[18514,2244,1729,639,6665,1875],"class_list":["post-49555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-asher-miller","tag-david-hughes","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-post-carbon-institute","tag-resilience-org","tag-shale-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49555","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=49555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49556,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49555\/revisions\/49556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}