New Study Says Shale Gas Has Staying Power
With new studies being published by activists with anti-fossil fuel, anti-drilling agendas that conclude the shale gas craze is a bubble that will pop quickly, the University of Texas at Austin - which is no stranger to drilling studies - has released results of an exhaustive and "exhausting" study that concludes the Barnett Shale gas will remain profitable for many years to come.
The report discloses that its co-principal investigator, Scott Tinker, sits on advisory boards of three oil and gas companies and is sometimes paid to speak to industry groups or private companies. Two other researchers involved in the study hold stock in oil and gas companies. While the fact that those things were disclosed represents a step forward from another UT report that had good things to say about fracking, the industry ties will no doubt be enough for most with any kind of anti-fracking leaning to ignore the study altogether.
Here are some details on the study's findings, as reported by Fuel Fix:
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The report discloses that its co-principal investigator, Scott Tinker, sits on advisory boards of three oil and gas companies and is sometimes paid to speak to industry groups or private companies. Two other researchers involved in the study hold stock in oil and gas companies. While the fact that those things were disclosed represents a step forward from another UT report that had good things to say about fracking, the industry ties will no doubt be enough for most with any kind of anti-fracking leaning to ignore the study altogether.
Here are some details on the study's findings, as reported by Fuel Fix:
Results of a new well-by-well study of the Barnett Shale indicate that although production from the North Texas field will decline through 2030, there’s still an enormous resource to tap profitably even at relatively low natural gas prices.
“The implication of this in a general sense is there’s quite a bit of drilling still to be done and production still to come from shale,” said Scott Tinker, director of University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology and the co-principal investigator for the study.
The study is predicated on natural gas prices reaching $4 per million British thermal units, about 50 cents above current prices, but well below 2008 prices of $12-plus.
The study likens the impact of shale drilling to the innovation of offshore drilling, which opened up new sources of petroleum decades ago, and says that tapping vast U.S. gas reserves has implications for energy, water and environmental policy.
“The shale basins will deliver enough in the next several decades that some long term planning can be done,” Tinker said.Read the whole article here.
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