U.S. government estimates of the amount of natural gas that can be extracted by fracking at the nation’s major shale plays—including Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale—may be far too optimistic, according to a new study by the University of Texas at Austin.
In 2013, the U.S. Energy Information Administration issued a report saying that, according to its analysis, shale wells, which require fracking to release their gas, would be productive at current levels for “over 30 years,” that is, at least until 2040.
But as Oilprice.com reports, researchers from UT’s Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering say shale gas production may peak 20 years earlier, followed by a rapid decline in output. Their findings were reported in a feature story published Dec. 3 in the scientific journal Nature.
The problem, according to the UT researchers, goes far beyond merely running out of natural gas. The researchers warn that the U.S. and many other countries, relying on a long-term availability of inexpensive gas, are investing billions of dollars in vehicles, factories and power plants that depend on gas.
Major proponents of fracking are President Obama in the U.S. and Prime Minister David Cameron in Britain. Obama has boasted that “our 100-year supply of natural gas is a big factor in drawing jobs back to our shores.” And Cameron has dismissed fracking opponents as “irrational.”
But if the UT scientists are right and gas production begins to fall off around 2020, all those billions of dollars put into gas-based vehicles and infrastructure will have been wasted.
The researchers conducted their own analyses of natural gas production at the four leading U.S. shale gas formations: the Barnett in Texas; the Fayetteville in Arkansas; the Haynesville in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas; and the Marcellus in and around the Appalachian Basin. These four formations provide two-thirds of U.S. gas production.
The UT team then extrapolated future output based on the formations’ geology and the expected market forces, including pricing. Their conclusion: Not only will gas production peak in 2020, but also output will be cut in half by 2030.
