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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (9482)	8/31/2009 11:38:28 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24225

August 31, 2009 A little shale gas skepticism from Matt Simmons This weekend we reported on a perspective that the oil industry's 150th anniversary may be the beginning of a natural gas era in the U.S., thanks to the lower CO2 releases from the fuel and the abundance of gas-bearing shale. Now for something completely different. Matt Simmons, (he of Twilight in the Desert) believes the excitement of huge domestic reserves of natural gas in shale is overblown and outright incorrect. "In the 40 years I've followed the industry I've been continuously amazed at the tangent people are willing to go off on without any data, or by getting the data wrong," Simmons said. When producers tap natural gas in shale formations the output is very high at first, with as much as 70 percent of the reserves tapped in the first year, Simmons said. Another 20 percent of the total is tapped in the second year while the remaining 10 percent, in theory, plays out over the next decade or more. Simmons simply doesn't believe all the gas is there that many believe and that the process of getting at it - the water-intensive hydraulic fracturing method - is a huge waste of otherwise drinkable water. A report linking contaminated drinking water to the process could be troubling for the procedure, he says. "I don't think natural gas will be this bridge fuel to the future," Simmons said. "I don't think the reserves will ever prove up enough to make them viable in the long term." blogs.chron.com