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Page added on April 1, 2016
Is U.S. Shale Oil & Gas Production Peaking? Part II: Oil Production
In Part I of this post, I discussed production of gas from the four largest shale plays in the U.S. Ordered by production levels, these are the Marcellus, Barnett, Haynesville and Fayetteville shales. In my mind it is quite unlikely that much new drilling will occur in Fayetteville and Haynesville. There will be some drilling in the Barnett and plenty in Marcellus, but significantly less than to date.
Based on my calculations, I concluded that these plays may deliver between 3 and 7 years of U.S. gas consumption in 2015, a far cry from the 100-year gas supply postulated by many experts. Consistently with this view, for at least three years I have argued that the large-scale oil and gas exports from the U.S. may not be good.
5 Comments on "Is U.S. Shale Oil & Gas Production Peaking? Part II: Oil Production"
rockman on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 11:12 am
“I concluded that these plays may deliver between 3 and 7 years of U.S. gas consumption in 2015…” I’m not sure what he’s trying to say. The combined production from all 4 plays in 2015 weren’t able to supply consumption demand for just the year 0f 2015. In fact total US NG in 2015 didn’t meet demand: not by much but in 2015 the US was still a net NG importer. IOW we consumed a tad more than we produced. Maybe he means the ultimate recovery from those plays over many decades will supply 3 to 7 years of typical US consumption. I’m not sure what that would imply since it’s a rather meaningless metric IMHO.
BTW: I don’t recall the most pie-eyed cornucopian saying these 4 trends would supply the US with its NG consumption requirements for 100 years. Especially when you consider that all the NG produced for all US fields for the last 80 years. In fact consider this seldom seen stat: US NG production from the very beginning of the govt keeping count in 1936: 1,449,183,815,003,948 cubic feet. Now consider the 2015 US NG consumption of 27,473,081,000,000 cubic feet.
Thus if the US had the same remaining NG reserves left to produce as it has produced in the last 80 years we would only have another 53 years of production. Of course it did take 80 years to develop those reserves in the first place which means if we did have the same reservoirs left to develop (which obviously we have nothing close to that) we would run out of NG before we had a chance to develop all those reserves.
All of which paints a completely absurd picture of future US NG production from piece of crap articles like this IMHO.. Needless to say whatever reserves we might develop from unconventional reservoirs the number will never come close to what we’ve recovered from all the US NG conventional reservoirs.
Don Stewart on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 12:28 pm
For some reason, they are reprinting only small excerpts from Tad Patzek’s articles.
Worth checking the original sources.
http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com
Don Stewart
Boat on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 12:33 pm
Meanwhile back at the ranch a nat gas pipeline is beginning built to Canada while 2 others will have their flows reversed. The mighty Marcellus continues to impact the northeast with cheap nat gas. Look for the US to be a net nat gas exporter this year.
GregT on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 1:13 pm
Meanwhile back on the Planet Earth. Natural gas still remains a fossil fuel, and continues to exacerbate the small hiccup most often referred to as global, catastrophic, runaway, climate change. Look for the human race to wipe itself off of the face of the planet, likely much sooner, rather than later.
Practicalmaina on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 3:05 pm
Boat you undestand how bad it is when a ceo has to kill himself in order to avoid the repurcusions of his actions, right?
in a buisness that usually rewards ceo’s even as bankruptcy looms. Usually they just have to have their lawyer read a letter to Congress saying they’re sorry but it wasn’t that bad.
The reckoning is coming, those pipelines up to the tar sand hell holes that was once an important boreal Forrest will prove to be a waste when Peabody and other big coal comps continue to close or downsize.