Isn't natural gas much easier to pump than oil? It's a gas, so isn't all that's involved is piercing the field and letting it flow? Doesn't that mean that it's a lot easier to pump natural gas and, thus, deplete the field than oil?

Obviously, I know very little any basic primer on the Natural gas pumping mechanics would be great

So how quickly do reserves deplete? Or, how long does North America have?

Monday, November 2, Arthur Berman wrote in his blog:

Pressure from Petrohawk helps cancel World Oil column

In an act of extraordinary courage, a top Petrohawk executive threatened to cancel his free subscription to World Oil if the magazine continued to publish my column. Today, John Royall, President and CEO for Gulf Publishing, cancelled my November column.

I have accordingly resigned as contributing editor.

Heading Out (Dave Summers) and I have been talking about the issues Arthur Berman raises for quite a while now. Most recently, Dave wrote a post called Shale Gas Estimates Perhaps Optimistic - An Interesting and Worrying Talk at ASPO.

So what are the issues involved?

What Arthur Berman is saying is that natural gas companies that extract shale are mis-estimating how quickly natural gas production will decline in the future--they are assuming gas production will decline more slowly than evidence indicates it will. As a result of their optimistic assumptions about decline rates, they are assuming that shale gas can profitably be extracted for as long as 50 years, when Berman believes the average well life is only about 8 years.