[copious.abundance]

And still another one. This one is in NW Louisiana around Shreveport, FYI.
--> LINK <--
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')arch 31, 2008
Cheapeake's massive shale find in Louisiana

At a time when it seems everyone in industry is hunting for the US' next big exploitation play, the Haynesville shale in north Louisiana debuted on the energy stage early last month during conference calls by small operators Goodrich Petroleum and Petrohawk Energy. But the play really captured rave reviews when shale slugger Chesapeake Energy revealed its presence there a couple of weeks later.

Chesapeake said it already believed it had 7.5 Tcfe of Haynesville reserve potential across its net 200,000 acres, but estimated up to 20 Tcfe with anticipated company acreage increases to 500,000 net acres. Those kind of numbers, coupled with whatever Petrohawk and Goodrich acreage might hold, potentially class the Haynesville in almost the same league as the Barnett Shale, whose estimated 29 to 39 Tcfe (3 Tcfe of which have already been produced) have ranked it among the US' biggest gas fields.

Chesapeake, which said it had hoped to keep Haynesville secret but largely devoted a conference call to its initial findings in the play after the two smaller operators leaked out news of its existence, has been by far the most vocal on the Haynesville's potential. Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon said the play, a relatively deep formation found at depths of 10,500 to 13,000 feet , "has a chance of being the most significant shale play in the company's history." For a company the size and breadth of Chesapeake, which has its hand in every significant US shale play and is the third-largest Barnett producer with 410,000 Mcfe/d there, that's saying something.

[...]

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'a') relatively deep formation found at depths of 10,500 to 13,000 feet

[joeltrout]

I am sure Aubrey knew this before he started buying all that stock.

Smart man.

joeltrout

[copious.abundance]

This article focuses on Oklahoma City where Chesapeake is located, but this paragraph was interesting:
--> LINK <--
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')cClendon said the nation can now count on a 5-percent annual supply increases for the immediate future. That would not only negate forecast needs for increasing liquid natural gas imports, but provide enough surplus to begin serious commercial applications for our nation’s transportation sector.

[Schadenfreude]

So, is Julian Darley now all wet went it comes to natural gas production in North America?

I thought we had been poking holes all over the place and we were just barely keeping production level. Everything I had been reading was suggesting that North American natural gas production was going to fall off a cliff around 2015 - 2020 or so.

Now, it appears that there has been a breakthrough in freeing gas from shale and we will have all the gas we want or need? What's the story?

[web]http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/intchart.asp?symb=CHK[/web]

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Schadenfreude', 'S')o, is Julian Darley now all wet went it comes to natural gas production in North America?

I thought we had been poking holes all over the place and we were just barely keeping production level. Everything I had been reading was suggesting that North American natural gas production was going to fall off a cliff around 2015 - 2020 or so.

Now, it appears that there has been a breakthrough in freeing gas from shale and we will have all the gas we want or need? What's the story?

[mos6507]

What is the EROEI of shale to natural gas?

[Schadenfreude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'Y')es, as I've posted a few times in other threads, the success of the Barnett Shale play in Texas more-or-less proves that large quantities of natural gas can be extracted from shale. I believe the Barnett alone now provides something like 7% of US natural gas supplies. Since the Barnett started booming, there have been a bunch of other shale plays popping up - the Marcellus Shale (which could be a real doozey), the New Albany Shale, the Fayettevile Shale, the Utica Shale (mostly in Quebec), and several others, including the one the Chesapeake CEO mentioned in the article.

Texas Barnett Shale Gas Production
(1993 through 2006)

Source

[TheDude]

The Oil Drum | Will Unconventional Natural Gas Save Us ? is a good start to learn about UNG, which is ca. 45% of US production now. The Oil Drum | North American Natural Gas Production and EROI Decline is more recent. Advanced Resources International has many papers on UNG to read. Like unconventional oil it depends on market prices being high enough to justify the added costs of drilling/infrastructure - which are constantly increasing. They're drilling an utterly mad number of wells per year now as well, and Canadian production seems to be declining as well.

Just noticed that TOD also has an intriguing brand new guest post by Jean Laherrere on Hydrates.

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Schadenfreude', '
')Why isn't it bigger news? How come it hasn't been reported on MSM? And if the news was as big as it appears, why hasn't Chesapeake's stock exploded? I know the chart looks good, but it doesn't reflect the enormity of the good news.

Wuzzup?

[copious.abundance]

Here's a map I found on this document here (PDF) showing some of the shale gas plays in the US, and the estimated sizes for some of them. There are already several more discovered since they made this map.

[Denny]

An interesting situation this is. Diesel will keep going up in price, its already far exceeded gasoline's price rise and it would seem natural gas will stabilize.

A good opportunity for vehicle engines which can run on natural gas.

See this article on alternative technology for this applicationMoose Jaw Times Herald: Alternative Fuels spawn new investments

[seahorse2]

Boone Pickens has long touted natural gas vehicles as the alternative to oil based vehicles.

Pickens

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')e cites using our own country’s abundance of natural resources – natural gas in particular – to reduce the import of foreign oil by as much as 30 percent. Specifically, using natural gas as a transportation fuel will not only decrease the country’s foreign dependencies, but will also make great strides towards cleaning up the environment.

[joewp]

So what? We keep the machine running a few more years and then what? It collapses harder and faster than it would have anyway. These wonderful discoveries just prolong the agony, all so a few can reap enormous profits at the expense of people, wildlife and the land.

Sometimes it seems Oil-Finder just wants to stretch out the crash until after he's dead so he doesn't have to deal with it.

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('joewp', '
')Sometimes it seems Oil-Finder just wants to stretch out the crash until after he's dead so he doesn't have to deal with it.

[seahorse2]

Who knows how much oil and gas is out there, but I always keep in mind this - that it would take a decade or longer to transition our transportation to NG. Look at Pickens quote above. He's big on NG as a transportation fuel, but even he says it would only reduce oil imports by about 30% or whatever the quote is. In other words, NG Pickens does not see NG as a panacea to oil. Even for oil, if Brazil ultimately can pump out 30 billion barrels, they won't start producing for another six years, and the next six years can be very painful with Russia now in decline and Saudi Arabia apparently not opening new finds and reserving them for future generations. So, even with the finds in NG and oil that are hopefully coming, its at best an amelioration of the pain and will not be business as usual. Some day, we'll all look back at the waste of the all you can eat American Buffet.

[Pablo2079]

I believe NG is a big component in fertilizer, so that will also help a lot....

[joewp]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'H')ead for the hills!

[Schadenfreude]

I'm glad as hell about it if it's as good as what Oilfinder says it is.

What about Julian Darley? Is he just a denialist then? He doesn't seem like the sort who would just ignore such good news without comment, acknowledgement or rebuttal.

He showed a powerpoint at the New Urbanist Conference in Texas just last week re-iterating his dire warnings about NG in North America. It would appear that he is setting himself up to be not just wrong, but a liar to boot.

Why would he not comment about NG from shale? It just seems too curious to me - why I am hearing this here on PO.com but nowhere else.

[DantesPeak]

This is going to be mighty costly - $100 billion. I'm still trying to figure the EROEI on this.

I wonder how much millions of barrels of oil it will take to provide the power and build the equipment that will let us "wean ourselves off oil"?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')hesapeake CEO: Shale Play Investment Could Top $75 Billion Over Next Decade
By Mark Hengel
4/15/2008 3:08:01 PM

A recent economic impact study projected the impact of the Fayetteville Shale Play on Arkansas would total about $18 billion over the coming decade. That number will be much larger according to the CEO of one of the natural gas companies drilling in the region.

"We are about to make that completely irrelevant," Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp., said of the economic impact study conducted by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. "The way I see it, [natural gas companies] are going to spend somewhere between $75 [billion] to $100 billion in your state over the next decade or so."