[PrestonSturges]

Someone I met in PA described fracking as a "scam" and that the gas companies are merely looking for areas with lots of working wells, setting up a fracking operation, and draining off the gas that would have been produced by the comventional wells.

[peripato]

Someone I met in PA described fracking as a "scam" and that the gas companies are merely looking for areas with lots of working wells, setting up a fracking operation, and draining off the gas that would have been produced by the comventional wells.

Well it is a scam, akin to the dot.com bubble by all accounts. But is that so surprising in latter day America?
Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush
Behind Veneer, Doubt on Future of Natural Gas

[Pops]

Depletion rates of new gas wells have been one of the reasons I haven't jumped up and down about the Gas Revolution.

I just stumbled across this site http://garyswindell.com/index.html and this article from 2001: Changes in the Performance of Texas Gas Wells. Updated through 2005 is here.




I gotta go but wanted to put this up for the swing shift to peruse...

[Keith_McClary]

Updated through 2005 is here.

The first table on that page shows 3X as many wells/year since 1971 but only 1/6 as much Ultimate Recovery/Well. How does production stay up? They pump them out twice as fast!

EDIT: I take that back, it doesn't make sense.

[rshizzle]

This is a reason I'm hesitant about the shale gas production starting in my area. I've read the decline is STEEP after year 1.

[TheAntiDoomer]

Cmon guys why the hell not. Use 2 decimal places in your guess.

High 4.79
Low. 3.23
Close. 3.98

[TheAntiDoomer]

No takers?

[copious.abundance]

It'll be free!

[TheAntiDoomer]

C'mon anybody? Challenges are Fun!

[TheAntiDoomer]

Might have to revise my prediction, NATTY GAS AT 3.00

[Graeme]

Natural Gas Signals a ‘Manufacturing Renaissance’

AS horizontal drilling and the controversial extraction technique known as fracking have made domestically produced natural gas more available and sharply cheaper, that gas has been widely embraced by industry, electric utilities and trucking fleets.

The rapid development of shale gas technology has helped reduce energy imports and, in some cases, encouraged companies producing petrochemicals, steel, fertilizers and other products to return to the United States after relocating overseas. Natural gas exports are growing and terminals built to hold imported supplies are being repurposed for international sales.

The American petrochemical industry, for example, uses natural gas as both its primary raw material, in the form of liquid ethane, and as an energy fuel. And cheaper prices have led to a major expansion of capacity in the United States.

The hydrocarbon molecules in natural gas are split apart and then recombined as building blocks for many products, including bulk chemicals and fertilizers. The chemical ethylene, which is largely derived from natural gas, is used to make things like pool liners, building insulation and food packaging.

According to Kevin Swift, chief economist at the American Chemistry Council, European producers mostly use oil-derived raw materials for making these same products. “The U.S. has a competitive advantage when oil is seven times as expensive as natural gas, but now we have more like a 50-to-1 advantage,” he said. “The ‘shale gale’ is really driving this. A million B.T.U.’s of natural gas that might cost $11 in Europe and $14 in South Korea is $2.25 in the U.S. Partly because of that, chemical producers have plans to expand ethylene capacity in the U.S. by more than 25 percent between now and 2017.”

A 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimates that high rates of shale gas recovery could result in a million new manufacturing jobs by 2025. Robert McCutcheon, United States industrial products leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in a statement that the revived natural gas industry “has the potential to spark a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S., including billions in cost savings, a significant number of new jobs and a greater investment in U.S. plants.”

nytimes

[dsula]

So instead of using the gas to help the transition to a non-oil society, it is once again wasted on plastic and other BS. It really looks like humanity will get what it deserves.

[Lore]

Energy is not the only factor in bringing back manufacturing to the US. This is another one of the many myopic happy talk stories, meant to boost moral and obfuscate the ongoing problem.

[dinopello]

So instead of using the gas to help the transition to a non-oil society, it is once again wasted on plastic and other BS. It really looks like humanity will get what it deserves.

The ultra-cheap gas is like the halloween candy your kids get. It takes either an unusually disciplined child to resist the urge to gorge and save some for later, or a very authoritarian parent enforcing it. We are certainly not very disciplined children.

From the gas industry perspective, they need it to appear that it will be plentiful and cheap for several decades so that the investment in equipment that depends on gas gets made. Once there is a sizeable investment in facilities and equipment that depend on NatGas, then the profits can be reaped. After that runs its course, then it's Barter Town!

[seahorse3]

Jeff Rubin talks a lot about a rebirth of manufacturing in the US also, due to the disappearance of the advantave of "wage abritrage" which allows factories to move overseas and take advantage of cheaper labor. With cheap energy, companies could seek cheaper labor costs overseas, but with more expensive energy, that "wage arbitrage" disappears and will bring manufacturing back home. So, not so sure a rebirth of manufacturing is as simple as cheap natural gas, certainly a factor in some cases, but possibly driven by higher fuel prices elseswhere.

[Plantagenet]

The Sierra Club has just reversed its position on natural gas electrical gas power plants --- it now opposes construction of new NG electric power plants

Sierra Club now opposes generating electricity from NG

NG releases much less CO2 then coal, so the Sierra Club and other liberal organisations previously supported new NG power plants. But today the Sierra Club announced they would try to stop the construction of new NG power plants.

This means the Sierra Club legal defense fund will now use the same kind of legal tactics to stop NG powerplants that it previously used to successfully shut down nuclear power plant construction and coal-fired power plant construction in the USA.

Apparently the success of frakking in the USA caused the Sierra Club to change its position on NG----the Sierra Club support of NG for use in power plants was contingent on NG not being abundant enough to be used in lots of electrical power plants.

[Lore]

Sounds good to me!

[KingM]

If the Sierra Club were at all serious about protecting the American environment, they would be advocates of immigration curbs in order to stabilize the American population at current levels. This current issue over NG power is similarly political, and will result in more coal being burned to generate electricity, which any idiot knows is worse for the environment from the destructive mining operations themselves, to carbon emissions, all the way to the mercury that finds its way into our fish.

[SeaGypsy]

So are they giving away free candles? Made from recycled orgainic beeswax?

[Plantagenet]

If the Sierra Club were at all serious about protecting the American environment, they would be advocates of immigration curbs in order to stabilize the American population at current levels.

That issue was fought out within the Sierra Club in the 80s. The Sierra Club used to be for zero population growth and in favor of limiting immigration to the US in order to protect the environment, but when they aligned themselves with the Democratic Party in the 80s, they also dropped the ZPG and immigration limits viewpoints, since those positions conflicted with the pro-immigration views of the democratic party in California.