Naysayers abuse Marcellus shale resource numbers

Aug. 26, 2011
After scientists in the US government increased their estimate of the exploratory potential of natural gas from the Marcellus shale, naysayers called the report a portentous climb-down.

After scientists in the US government increased their estimate of the exploratory potential of natural gas from the Marcellus shale, naysayers called the report a portentous climb-down.

The US Geological Survey on Aug. 23 boosted its mean estimate of the undiscovered, technically recoverable gas resource in the Middle Devonian Marcellus shale to 84 tcf from the 2 tcf it estimated in 2002.

Here’s the headline of a news release about the report from one interest group: “We Told You So: USGS Reports US Natural Gas Inventory Massively Overestimated.”

The former estimate was 2 tcf. The new estimate is 84 tcf. How could the former figure have been an overestimate?

And how can anyone imply these numbers represent a gas “inventory?” They’re undiscovered resources, not gas supplies.

The news release came from a group based in Santa Rosa, Calif., called the Post Carbon Institute, a name gleaming with context.

It compared the new USGS estimate not with the former USGS estimate but with the 410 tcf assessment published by the US Energy Information Administration earlier this year.

The institute says the gas industry has “propagated dangerously false claims about natural gas production, supply, cost, and environmental impact.” It says EIA, the Obama administration, and environmental groups have been duped.

The institute’s charges could be ignored as nonsense peddled by an extremist group. But the twin themes of overestimation and EIA reliance on industry data have become central to reporting by the New York Times, cited approvingly by the institute, about the potential of gas from shales.

Because the Times, with its outsize ability to embarrass, exerts otherwise undeserved influence in Washington, DC, these claims must be addressed.

More questions thus come to mind.

Does anyone at the Times understand the critical difference between undiscovered resources and reserves and appreciate the imprecision inherent in assessments of them?

And where is EIA supposed to procure data about oil and gas operations if not from the industry that performs them?

(Online Aug. 26, 2011; author’s e-mail: [email protected])