As jrwakefield noted above, there have been a few of us who have not bought into the natural gas hype. When gas wells drop over 80% in production in the first year one has to continue drilling at an ever increasing rate just to sustain production. With well costs heading towards $10 million it becomes harder to justify (to other than gullible investors) that a well will bring in a viable economic return, as those wells in the “sweet spots” of the different fields become drained. Experience in Poland is already showing that just because there are shales with gas in them does not mean that the gas can be economically produced. A more realistic measure of the size of the US reserve is more likely closer to 23-years than a hundred, and that is within the functional lifetime of new construction. But somebody has to try and shift attention from the problems that Chesapeake is running into, and this is a very well written try.
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