Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Shale Gale Makes US World's No. 1 Producer of Gas

The EIA reported today that the U.S. surpassed Russia as the world's No. 1 producer of consumer-grade, dry natural gas in both 2009 and 2010 (see chart).  Based on actual U.S. production in 2011 and an estimate of Russia's production for last year, it's also likely that the U.S. was the world's leading producer of natural gas in 2011 as well, see chart above. 

In 2005, Russia produced 17% more natural gas than the U.S. when the U.S. was using conventional drilling, but then U.S. production increased by 18% between 2005 and 2010, mostly because of the growth in shale gas production from the increased use of advanced hydraulic fracking technology and horizontal drilling over that period.  

3 Comments:

At 3/14/2012 12:09 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Here is my bold prediction: By the end of Obama's 2nd term, fracking will be banned and natural gas will be back at $10 per MMBtu.

He will single handedly end the energy revolution.

 
At 3/14/2012 11:04 AM, Blogger juandos said...

"By the end of Obama's 2nd term, fracking will be banned and natural gas will be back at $10 per MMBtu"...

Good point...

Is there a futures market yet in pond scum?

I wonder if all this 'new' gas on the market has an indirect relationship with the increasing size of the world's LNG fleet?

 
At 3/14/2012 11:41 AM, Blogger juandos said...

I just had to look into unknown's comment a bit further...

From API: Erik Milito speaks at press briefing on oil supplies and gasoilne prices

'The first step, however – and what I’d like to focus on this afternoon – is to recognize the failures that have helped put us in our current predicament. Recognizing where we’ve gone wrong is key to making better decisions in the future.

Gasoline prices are higher today at least in part because government has neglected to pay sufficient attention to the importance of producing more of our own oil and natural gas. Adding supplies to markets is critical to keeping downward pressure on prices. And government policy has prevented and continues to prevent that.

The administration says its policies have supported more development and that oil production is rising, but most of today’s production increases relate to projects begun before it came into office as well as to what is happening on state and private lands. Moreover, from 2009 to 2011, the fact is that production from federal lands and federal waters combined declined significantly for both oil and natural gas.
'...

 

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