US Natural Gas: The Role of Unconventional Gas

US natural gas production has been flat for a number of years. We keep hearing that US production is expected to begin declining sometime in the next few years, but it doesn’t seem to happen. While it is not obvious from most published data, the reason production remains level is because unconventional gas production has been rising at the same time that conventional production has been declining. In this post, I will look at unconventional natural gas, since it plays such a pivotal role.


…Figure 3 shows a natural gas production forecast that I found on a BP website. It is not too different from other forecasts that one sees for natural gas: Conventional natural gas production is expected to continue to fall. The various unconventional sources of natural gas will rise to keep production flat for several years. Demand for natural gas is expected to be greater than the amount that can be supplied using conventional and unconventional production. We will try to meet the supply shortfall with imported liquefied natural gas.

The Oil Drum