Fracking gas quantities greatly exaggerated...

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/New-Study-Claims-US-Shale-Gas-Quantities-Grossly-Exaggerated.html


Major proponents of fracking are President Obama in the US 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 US 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 US 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, output will be cut in half by 2030.
Related: Global Drilling Slowdown On The Way
How did the EIA and the UT team reach such different conclusions? The Texas researchers said they simply studied the shale formations in greater detail.

These four formations provide two-thirds of US gas production.

Put that thinking hat on now.........what about the hundreds of geological formations which are known, measured, but not in production. Southern Illinois has a significant gas production curve, but legislation allowing fracking only passed in 2013. If you are arguing that in five years, American gas production will be cut in half from 2020 to 2030, you have not read the article correctly. These are fields in production now. Most new fields are not in production, and the 100 year estimate is reflective of those new fields, not those fields currently in production. We have only scratched the surface on natural gas production, particularly some of the Alaskan fields and off shore fields. Hell, Under camp FEMA out 10 miles into the gulf is a massive gas reserve which has not been fracked let alone developed.