In the featured article of the December 2010 issue of Navigant’s NG Market Notes newsletter, Director Rick Smead takes a look at what lies ahead for shale gas now that it has already reached production levels that the EIA predicted would not happen for another ten years.
Many times over the last two years, we have ex¬plored the sudden and dramatic shift of the U.S. nat¬ural gas industry from depleting resource to afford¬able abundance, driven by various unconventional domestic supplies including the enormous shale gas resource. Indeed, since the aggressive estimates and predictions in the 2008 North American Natural Gas Supply Assessment we produced for the Ameri¬can Clean Skies Foundation, reality over the last two years has been even more impressive. Shale gas pro¬duction has moved from an accelerating 3-power curve to a 4-power curve – steeper and faster. A comparison of actual shale gas production to the Energy Information Administration’s forecasts in the 2008 and 2010 Annual Energy Outlooks is truly dra¬matic.
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