UT Study: Fayetteville Shale to Contribute to US Gas Supply for Years

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014 and is filed under Oil and Gas Current Events

The Fayetteville Shale, considered one of the most productive shale gas basins in the United States, will continue to be one of the largest contributors to the country’s natural gas supply for many years, a study by the University of Texas’ (UT) Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) in Austin said.

The study, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, used the same methodology as the bureau’s 2013 assessment of the Barnett Shale’s natural gas production. The methodology used by BEG was designed to be one of the most rigorous assessments of production in U.S. shale gas basins. It integrates geology, economics and engineering into its assessments. The Fayetteville Shale assessment drew production data from individual wells that were drilled in the shale formation from 2005 to 2011. The assessment concluded that technically recoverable gas reserves for the region are 38 trillion cubic feet (Tcf).

About 18 Tcf are estimated to be economically feasible to recover when natural gas prices are close to $4 per million cubic feet (MMcf). However, the production outlook is only somewhat sensitive to the price of natural gas, the BEG team said.

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