Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush

Article: Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush

Equating shale gas industry to Ponzi schemes and con game is not good. New York Times expose of the issues with shale gas:

“Although energy companies routinely project that shale gas wells will produce gas at a reasonable rate for anywhere from 20 to 65 years, these companies have been making such predictions based on limited data and a certain amount of guesswork, since shale drilling is a relatively new practice.

Most gas companies claim that production will drop sharply after the first few years but then level off, allowing most wells to produce gas for decades.

Gas production data reviewed by The Times suggest that many wells in shale gas fields do not level off the way many companies predict but instead decline steadily.

“This kind of data is making it harder and harder to deny that the shale gas revolution is being oversold,” said Art Berman, a Houston-based geologist who worked for two decades at Amoco and has been one of the most vocal skeptics of shale gas economics.

The Barnett shale, which has the longest production history, provides the most reliable case study for predicting future shale gas potential. The data suggest that if the wells’ production continues to decline in the current manner, many will become financially unviable within 10 to 15 years”

The focus in Texas/Louisiana but surely the same questions must be raised here in Marcellus country. According to our own expert:

“Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, said the debate over long-term well performance was far from resolved. The Haynesville shale has not lived up to early expectations, he said, but industry projections have become more accurate and some wells in the Marcellus shale, which stretches from Virginia to New York, are outperforming expectations.”

Yes, but could those wells be in the sweet spots? In other words, how much of the Marclleus play is actually viable. Time will tell.