No topsoil left in Britain in 60 years

[Tritonic]

That's because the US had a big discovery spree in the late 1970's, and those discoveries hadn't yet been added to the proven reserves.

<snip graph>

That Mr. Laherrere guy again? I want some of what he's smoking!

Looking at the way he has the area under both curves near equal, etc, and looking at the location of 2010 on his graph, we are supposed to be at next to nil natural gas reserves. We would be running out about now, in the midst of a crash with futures prices zooming up. But that's not happening in reality. Does he really think the industry is putting billions into expanding natural gas powerplants right now because all their experts are ignorant fools who'd choose dependence on a fuel with (in his world) nil supply left, instead of coal?

Now to get more specific, on how his chart is utterly screwed up:

His chart has a plot of discoveries. But it is not accurate. Cumulative past discoveries can not possibly be less than cumulative past production (obviously, since you can't produce an unit of natural gas without discovering its field first). Also, cumulative discoveries by 2010 can not possibly be less than cumulative production pre-2010 plus remaining reserves in 2010. His chart is for all of North America and Mexico from the year 1900 on. Over that region, cumulative production of natural gas up to 2010 was about 1320 Tcf (primarily U.S. plus some Canada, little in Mexico).

Remaining U.S. reserves, in terms of technically (affordably) recoverable natural gas resources, were 1750 Tcf in 2007 (EIA data). As will be shown with references later and as implied in the U.S. Secretary of Energy's statements of last month, actually recent 2009-2010 discoveries and drilling improvements have raised that above 2000 Tcf already. Of course, Canada and Mexico have some too, but, even neglecting them to save time, there's a relevant point to observe.

Considering 1300 Tcf past consumption, then 2000+ Tcf reserves left today, cumulative natural gas discoveries up through 2010 have thus amounted to 3300+ Tcf.

On his graph, regarding area under the curves, each one of the rectangles in the graph's grid corresponds to 50 Tcf (being 10 years horizontal and 5 Tcf/year vertical). So thus the area under his discovery curve should be the equivalent of 66+ rectangles in area, if it were to match the 3300+ Tcf figure that it must.

As can be seen very easily looking at his graph, the area under his discovery curve isn't remotely close to that, not even half of the actual figure. In short, his graph is junk. Whether by accident or intentionally, it depicts the situation wrongly and would merely mislead people. I'd trust the U.S. Geological Survey or EIA reserve data and production projections over him any day.

And then this happens

That's a 2004 article. My figures are rather up to date 2007-2010 data. Besides, that's much less than the huge 2009-2010 upwards revisions for the overall U.S. natural gas resource base, shown a bit later.

One could arguably count some of the inferred reserves towards the amount which is recoverable, but not undiscovered reserves since they're only thought to exist and haven't been surveyed, drilled, nor proven in any way.

The approximate amount of undiscovered resources actually can be somewhat estimated. For instance, if almost all resources were already found, we'd expect to see few new reserve additions, rarely finding anything new. Conversely, however, a high rate of new discoveries implies not having already fully surveyed more than a portion of the countless cubic kilometers underground yet. Of course, this is speaking in merely qualititative terms, when the experts at the EIA rather do a much more sophisticated mathematical investigation and have other methods.

The EIA's estimate of 2007 for affordably recoverable natural gas resources (1750 Tcf reserves versus 23 Tcf/year current consumption) really was conservative. If they were going off the deep end of optimistic speculation, they'd be counting more of the 10000+ Tcf of other U.S. natural gas resources (the resource pyramid map again) which are more questionable depending on future market prices and technological refinements.

[Tritonic]

But we still have an approximate idea of how much natural gas is affordably recoverable, even though the bulk of it is not surveyed to exactly that degree yet. The government's EIA has determined that natural gas resources, affordable under present economics, amount to around 1750 TCF within the U.S.

I count about 770 TCF or so.

However, what you think there is utterly contradictory to mainstream reports, like the U.S. government's EIA previously mentioned.

In fact, to put the matter bluntly, such also seems very out of touch in the context of the past couple years of U.S. natural gas news, like the recent giant new discoveries:

US Has Almost 100-Year Supply of Natural Gas
NEW YORK (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL via Dow Jones Newswires), Jun. 17, 2009
The amount of natural gas available for production in the United States has soared 58% in the past four years, driven by a drilling boom and the discovery of huge new gas fields in Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, a new study says.

The report, due to be released Thursday by the nonprofit Potential Gas Committee, concludes the U.S. has more than 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas still in the ground, or nearly a century's worth of production at current rates. That's a 35.4% jump over the committee's last estimate, in 2007, of 1,532 trillion cubic feet, the biggest increase in the committee's 44-year history. <snip>

The new study represents an authoritative confirmation of other recent estimates, including an industry-backed report last summer that concluded the U.S. could have as much as 2,247 trillion cubic feet of gas. Unlike that report, which was based on company estimates, the Potential Gas Committee's study was prepared by industry geologists who analyzed individual gas fields using seismic imagery and production data provided by gas producers.<snip>

The sudden increase in supplies, combined with a drop in demand due to the recession, has led to a gas glut, pushing prices to about $4 per million British thermal units

http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=77352

Also last year:

In recent years, the oil industry developed technologies to drill horizontally into gas-bearing shale seams and fracture the rock with high-pressure water injections, called hydrofracturing. These techniques make it possible to recover shale gas reserves that were separated in many tiny pockets that could not be tapped economically before, said John Curtis, a Colorado School of Mines professor.

According to a 2008 report from the Potential Gas Committee, estimates of gas resources surged from more than 1,300 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in 2006 to more than 1,800 tcf last year. Much of that jump came from shale gas, which made up 616 tcf of the 2008 total.

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/08/05 ... -2382.html

In fact, though 2009 was recent, let's fast forward further to just 1 and 2 months ago:

March 11, 2010, 4:10 PM EST <snip>

Exxon Mobil Corp., which pumps more oil than every member of OPEC except Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, is counting on natural gas to provide the bulk of its future growth. <snip>

Supply Glut

Gas futures traded in New York have lost almost one-fifth of their value this year as surging output from new wells in Texas and Louisiana added to a supply glut. Only sugar has performed worse than gas among commodity futures since the end of 2009.

Exxon expects to increase production by 3 percent to 4 percent this year, Andy Swiger, a senior vice president, said during today’s presentation. That would be at least 10 times the rate of growth in 2009.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... rowth.html

U.S. Natural Gas Reserves May Have Doubled, Secretary Chu Says
April 06, 2010, 10:07 AM EDT <snip>

New natural-gas drilling technologies may have doubled U.S. reserves of the fuel, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said today.

U.S. natural gas reserves have definitely increased by about 30 percent and “probably has doubled,” Chu said in a speech at a conference in Washington hosted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“That’s a big deal because it will be a transition fuel as we go to renewables,” Chu said.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... -says.html

Shale gas has been commercially produced for more than 100 years in the Appalachian Basin and the Illinois Basin of the United States, yet often before at merely marginal competitiveness in the market. However, recent drilling technology refinements are greatly improving economics, capabilities, and production:



This is how fast change can occur, a boom like a gold rush:



Not long ago, in 1996, shale gas was 1.6% of the total U.S. gas supply. After doubling again and again, it was more than 7% last year, and so on.

The past decade and this decade actually appear to be the start of a boom time for natural gas, such as shale gas, not going to last forever but certainly going to contribute towards keeping industry running during these several decades, buying more time for improvements in renewables.

The improved drilling technology is able to so improve technical reserve figures because there's a giant quantity of easily 10000+ Tcf of total natural gas resources in the ground in America, as illustrated in the much earlier EIA "resource pyramid" graph. As market prices change and technological refinements occur, what changes over time is how much of that gets exactly, expensively surveyed already (to meet all the technical and legal requirements to count as specific "proven reserves") and what fraction of it is competitively affordable to extract, to help meet our currently 23 Tcf/year consumption.

[Patrick Degan]

Also, in the US much of oil consumed is used for things like heating, with global warming this need will be cut. While air conditioning demand for energy will increase, but the good news are that it is mostly powered by coal.

Um, dead wrong. Global warming does not mean warmer, shorter winters so you can cut back on the heating. The global mean temperature will rise. Locally, however, global warminig means increasing variability in climate extremes by region: more severe winters, hard summer droughts, more frequent and severe storms, sea level rise and glacial melt. Furthermore, increased burning of coal only exascerbates these problems.

[Surlethe]

Degan, you can't rebut that point like that for two reasons: first, such variation will itself vary by geography; second, the point is ultimately about heating oil use, so if winters are harsher but shorter, people could very well use less oil total. The questions and answers need to be quantitative, not qualitative.

Of course, the question itself is deficient in precisely the same regards -- no evidence is presented to support the assertion made, which falls prey to precisely the same points I just outlined.