A little shale gas skepticism from Matt Simmons

…Matt Simmons, (he of Twilight in the Desert) believes the excitement of huge domestic reserves of natural gas in shale is overblown and outright incorrect.

“In the 40 years I’ve followed the industry I’ve been continuously amazed at the tangent people are willing to go off on without any data, or by getting the data wrong,” Simmons said.

When producers tap natural gas in shale formations the output is very high at first, with as much as 70 percent of the reserves tapped in the first year, Simmons said. Another 20 percent of the total is tapped in the second year while the remaining 10 percent, in theory, plays out over the next decade or more.

Simmons simply doesn’t believe all the gas is there that many believe and that the process of getting at it – the water-intensive hydraulic fracturing method – is a huge waste of otherwise drinkable water. A report linking contaminated drinking water to the process could be troubling for the procedure, he says.

Houston Chronicle