Natural Gas Is ABUNDANT

According to a June 2008 study by Navigant Consulting, North American has at least a 120-year supply of natural gas – contradicting the notion that America is running out. And as large reserves are developed that five years ago weren’t possible to produce, that supply is growing. It’s vital because many experts agree that global oil production has peaked, even as demand is still rising. Because of its growing abundance, domestic natural gas will play a major role in meeting our 21st-century energy needs.

“The assessments and estimates on natural gas supply are very impressive and have, frankly, caught industry forecasters off guard,” shared Rick Smead, one of the study’s co-authors and overall project manager for NCI. The study found that while all three unconventional gas sources have increased production over the past decade, natural gas production from shale formations is growing exponentially, increasing from less than a billion cubic feet a day in 1998, to about 5 billion cubic feet a day now. That’s a compound annual rate of growth of over 20%, which is over 600% for the time period.

“The extent of this ramp-up has not been fully captured by many reserve estimators,” said Smead, “probably because their emergence has been too rapid for existing models to capture accurately.”

There are at least 22 shale basins located onshore in more than 20 states in the U.S. including Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan.

New technologies have allowed the rapid emergence of gas-producing shales as a major energy source, representing a truly transformative event for U.S. energy supplies. American producers can clearly supply enough natural gas to meet today’s uses and become an economical source of transportation fuel in the form of CNG or greater supplies of electricity for plug-in hybrids for generations to come.