Quite incredibly, for two days running including a two column boldface headline on this Sunday's front page, "Insiders Sound Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush", and again on Monday, "Behind Veneer, Doubt on Future of Natural Gas" The New York Times descended into a realm approaching yellow journalism: reportage of freighted opinion presented as news often with only the flimsiest attribution, often undated or old enough no longer to be germane given the explosive developments in the field, repeatedly out of context and clearly selected to substantiate a predetermined point of view. In doing so, offering a selection of documents "including hundreds of industry emails, internal agency documents and reports by analysts" imparting the New York Times' imprimatur to documents whose "names and identifying information have been redacted to protect the confidentiality of source, many of whom are not authorized by their employers to communicate with the Times." Documents presented without context nor permitting the reader in too many cases to be able to ascertain the who, why, and motivating factors. Is this the new world of newspaper reporting?
The articles are shameless in deprecating the standing of institutions that hold differing views than that of the Times. The United States Energy Information Administration is excoriated for its optimistic assessments of shale gas reserves and its potential by inferring their research relies on "outside consultants with ties to the industry". This from the masters of redacted references.
In its attempt to minimize the enormous advance in natural gas potential that shale gas brought to the nation, no mention is made that after the retracement of oil and gas prices post the events of 2008, natural gas prices have barely increased because of the abundant new shale gas supply and continue to stay near $4.00 mmbtu with corresponding and significant benefit to gas consuming home heating bills and monthly electricity budgets. This while the price of oil has more than tripled to circa $100/bbl responding in part to market conditions where no such new abundance of supply has evolved to hold prices down.
No mention is made that the abundance and potential of shale gas is at the cusp of turning the United States into an energy exporter with the Macquarie Group (a major Australian company) and Freeport LNG making a significant investment to produce 1.4 billion cubic feet/day of Liquefied Natural Gas together with loading and export facilities at Freeport, Texas.
The New York Times' articles go on heavy-handedly interjecting terminology such as "Ponzi Scheme", "Replay of Enron", "Replay of the dot com bubble", "Looks like crap", with but a faintly passing reference that major and well schooled oil companies such as ExxonMobil have bought into shale gas recently. Cleverly omitted is the important fact that Exxon spent $1.7 billion buying shale gas reserves earlier this year, and they didn't buy them from Bernie Madoff. That in 2010 Shell paid $4.7 billion for the shale gas producer East Resources. That BHP, perhaps the world's largest mining company, made a significant investment in shale gas with Chesapeake Resources earlier this year. Nor that earlier this year as well, Exxon teamed up with Total, the French oil giant, to develop shale gas deposits in Poland. And on.
The Times has a long history of buttering up the oil industry, an industry that would be a major loser if the projections for shale gas are proven out over time. The Times' obeisance to the oil industry, oil interests and OPEC has been touched in these posts gong back five years:
- The New Times Shamelessly Shills For OPEC
- The New York Times Mouthpiece of the American Petroleum Institute" 07.23.07
- The New York Times Wins The Alfred E. Neuman Award For Its OPEC Coverage
- Paul Krugman and the 'Time's' Pious Pontifications at the Pump
- The New York Times Pipes The Saudi Production Polka
- The New York Times' Hidden Hand on Oil's Agenda
- The New York Times Pumps for Higher Oil and Gas Prices
The Coal Industry will also be celebrating the New York Times' "exposee". Happily for the coal industry the articles will be referenced by those with the responsibility or conscience to reduce carbon emissions resulting in further delays to the conversion of coal fired power plants to natural gas feedstock. Hereby we all owe the New York Times a word of thanks.
Follow Raymond J. Learsy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/raymondLearsy
Shale gas wells have shown much quicker decline than conventional wells and those real world data contradict many of the assumptions in business plans.
Shale gas is just a small blip on the terminal decline curve of natural gas in the US. Remember that peak NG was in the mid 70s.
Anybody who sees shale gas as the savior is falling into a trap. Yes it helps but it's not the long term salvation. It's pretty clear that the companies hype it to the max to please their investors so it makes a lot of sense to call it a bubble, or a Ponzi scheme because they have to drill faster and faster to keep offsetting deteriorating wells.
As as to how much money is to be made - that depends totally on the yield per new play and it seems the projected yields were way overstated. Of course it also depends on the NG market price and given that everybody and his mother seems to be drilling for shale gas these days this it is self defeating.
The more scientifically literate you are, the more likely that you are skeptical of the nat gas haters and of global warming. Same likely goes for fracking technologyThere is a Yale University survey which finds that the more people know about the climate, the more skeptical they become. They sampled 1,540 people on the following different types of information: how much scientific literacy they possessed (e.g., how well they answered questions about things like the time it takes for the Earth to circle the sun and the relative sizes of electrons and atoms), how numerate they were (e.g., their ability to engage in mathematical reasoning), what their cultural values were, and their thoughts on the risks of global warming and nuclear power. Overall, the more knowledge lowered the global warming concern (p-value around 6%).
The cultural value groupings were 'individualism and hierarchy' who believe industry and technology have low risk and restricting gun ownership is bad, vs. 'egalitarian and communitarian', who believe industry and technology have a high risk and restricting gun ownership is good. because if you are afraid of industry and technology, you probably love the Global Warming solutions to regulate technology and industry more. Yes, Mr. tendentious NY Times English major without an understanding of standard errors, it is.
If you have any climate science papers that show a scientifically valid cause of the observed warming other than the greenhouse effect please list them.
The disaster of fracking is becoming increasingly well documented. What is less documented is the fact of leakage. Natural gas is lighter than air, so any leaks from pipelines, tanks, etc. go into the atmosphere, where they trap heat much more efficiently than CO2. With many bus systems now happily burning this "clean" natural gas, there are many more chances for leaks, and so we continue to heat the planet to disastrous levels.
No, when information is vital to the public interest, but criminals are likely to retaliate against anybody who makes it available, it's always been common to keep sources' identities anonymous, as Woodward & Bernstein kept "Deep Throat's" identity secret for nearly 40 years. This is not "new" and your complaints are disingenuous.
Are you a paid poster from some big oil company? I mean Big Oil with their big expensive oil refineries could lose big time if natural gas replace even 10% of all the fuel usage in cars today. There are over 3000 drilling companies out there employing thousands and thousands of people and natural gas clean up for sale is relatively cheap and easy when compared to oil sands.
Big Oil won't be able to control this market!
There are about 11.4 million natural gas vehicles out there but less than 1% in the U.S.
Yes, Big Oil has been very successful in stopping natural gas cars here even with all the incentives different state governments have tried to reduce smog!
I ask again are you a pawn of Big Oil?
All alternative vehicles reduce our dependence on petroleum. What Alternative Fuel Vehicle Will You Drive Next? - Hannah Elliott - De Luxe - Forbes
Coal and Natural gas must quickly be phased out of the power gen and home heating market and replaced with nukes. The surplus NG can be used as transition transportation fuel but this will only work if the Utah model closing all of T Boones ripoff Clean Energy CNG stations.
Eventually the NG in transpo would be replaced with nuke synfuels and electric vehicles.
Drilling business sources have been pointing out economic problems with fracking natural gas long before the NYT article: It takes more energy and investment to produce compared to "dry" NG. So, it is not profitable at $4.50/mcf. The production cycle on fracked wells is much shorter compared to dry NG wells, 5-7 years for frack - 25 years for dry. This means ongoing investment in more drilling and fracking to keep up production. These higher costs mean that fracked NG would be profitable with prices roughly double or triple current price. Many fracked wells that continue to produce are simply maintaining leases.
It may be true that a properly installed fracking well will not contaminate nearer surface aquifers, but there's not enough inspection and regulation of drillers to assure this. There is also a very real danger in the disposal of the spent fracking fluids - do the nearly bankrupt states have the resources to properly police these operations? I don't think so.
Finally, NG is ultimately much more important for making ammonia fertilizer that to burn in personal automobiles.
Did some checking on the production cycle it's basically the same from all the web sites I checked not the 5-7 years you quote.
http://nohydrofracturin.qwestoffice.net/hydro_faqs.htm#q2
I pointed out that the $4.50/mcf was equivalent to about $0.50/gallon for gasoline meaning there is plenty of room.
Second natural gas which is 90+% methane is actually a renewable gas. Don't believe me go to a pig farm where they use the waste in either anaerobic digestion or pyrolysis to run small turbine generators for electricity. The whole concept of land fields should and could be replaced making methane. Natural gas infrastructure could be used for a more sustainable renewable methane production. Carbon neutral!
If 10% of all U.S. vehicles changed to natural gas you might have to idle a few of those dirty old expensive BIG OIL refineries!
Do you work at Chevron?
Your link refers to hydrofracking for a WATER well - not a shale gas well. Of course, the fractures remain after fracking - permanently, for the most part. In a NG well however, the gas is released by fracking and then it leaves the formation quickly. Same for oil produced with fracking in the Bakken Shale in ND/MT. This means a shorter production cycle for the fracked NG or oil well.
My point is that the energy situation with oil is very serious and our economy depends on massive cheap energy consumption, and I don't think NG will be a panacea that will allow business as usual to continue. The optimism voiced by NG boosters is not warranted IMO.
rooftop solar, offshore wind, waste bio char bio fuels, and underwater turbines have non of the water or emission problems of thermal fossil and nukes. This combination can provide all the energy the world needs, cheaper than nukes, carbon negatives, forever, cut our world water use in half, and ready to replace fossil and nuke within 7 years with historical doubling rates.
Also, several other foreign oil companies are buying up shale gas rights in the US too. China and the others can buy anywhere in the world, and they're buying here.
I mean once it gets out that you can run a CNG Honda on a fuel cost of just $0.025/mile and a 90 mile/gallon scooter cost $0.04/mile - you might idle some polluting refineries - and the New York Times and Washington can't have that!
http://www.energyindepth.org/2011/06/what-they%E2%80%99re-saying-36-hours-later/
I think we will need shale gas - to prevent catastrophic collapse and ease our transition to lower energy consumption (and lower living standards) and to reserve for making essential ammonia fertilizer. Claims of 100 year supplies of NG by company CEOs and spokespeople without mentioning that it will require MUCH more expensive NG prices is classic investment hype. Our economy can't provide current living standards with oil at $100/bbl or NG at $12/mcf.
We are in real trouble with energy and NG will not be a panacea that will allow us to continue driving our cars and burning energy at will.