Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst?
 

Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst: Art Berman, Bill Powers | MyFDL


In a recent interview, Powers said the “bubble” will end up looking a lot like the housing bubble that burst in 2008-2009, and that U.S. shale gas will last no longer than ten years. He told The Energy Report:

My thesis is that the importance of shale gas has been grossly overstated; the U.S. has nowhere close to a 100-year supply. This myth has been perpetuated by self-interested industry, media and politicians…In the book, I take a very hard look at the facts. And I conclude that the U.S. has between a five- to seven-year supply of shale gas, and not 100 years.

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Berman is a petroleum geologist, Associate Editor of the American Association of Petroleum Geolgists Bulletin and Director of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He maintains the blog Petroleum Truth Report.

“In the Eagleford shale, which is supposed to be the mother of all shale oil plays, the annual decline rate is higher than 42%,” he stated. “They’re going to have to drill hundreds, almost 1000 wells in the Eagleford shale, every year, to keep production flat. Just for one play, we’re talking about $10 or $12 billion a year just to replace supply.”

Berman believes there’s a possibility that this could lead to an economic crisis akin to which happened during the Big Bank bailouts of 2008.

“I add all these things up and it starts to approach the amount of money needed to bail out the banking industry. Where is that money going to come from?,” he asked the interviewee.

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He's not the only one talking like that. A lot of the plays are showing rapid decline in productivity after the first year on a per-well basis. The Shale-oil supply doesn't seem to be all that stable in the long run.

Just need it to go another year or two (I work there).

Better discussions on The Oil Drum

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But I'd have to guess they will get the export thing going with CNG so that when the wells run dry the US will be tied in with world gas prices...??? Too much profit there not to? Gonna hurt.


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We are running out of water to drink or to farm with in some areas. I think that fracking will run up against one limit or another sooner than many people think. There is certainly a fracking financing bubble - there are too many people ready to throw money at anybody who wants to poke holes in the ground, with little regard for the actual consequences, like poisoned wells or earthquakes or methane releases.

Reminds me of food and ag...farming and the whole GMO issue....where there is money to be made...the environment and people's health take the backseat.

The current debt issues mean the environment and people's health will take the backseat.

First in...first out...profits...and disaster capitalism.

Hightower says the top 1% own 92% of all stocks...so who is it that is really making policy? GUESS.

Ill bite. Sure, non-gmo would be great, but half the world would die of starvation from lower yield. Offer your own solution, I want to hear this.

That is the Monsanto sales pitch - hook, line, and sinker. Accelerated agriculture using synthetic fertilizer and factory methods and deep wells - is not only unsustainable, it kills the soil, pollutes the water, and causes about 25% of the greenhouse gasses.

We have to take a cue from nature: there can be NO WASTE. Everything must be sustainable; basically forever. If there is any waste, we're doing it wrong. We need to take a long hard look at what Wes Jackson proposed in his 50 year agricultural plan to move to 80% perennials. Nature builds up the soil and produces more over time.

Right now, we are eating oil and gas, soil is washing into the ocean way faster than it can be be formed by the worms and bugs, and the aquifers are nearly gone. We are running out of phosphorus, fer cryin' out loud.

Which should we use our precious water for: drinking and cooking, flushing our toilets, growing our food, fracking for gas and oil, or raising factory meat?

Non-partisan...fact based info....
 

Food and Agriculture | Union of Concerned Scientists

Our agricultural system has lost its way.

Millions of acres of corn, soybeans, and other commodity crops, grown with the help of heavy government subsidies, dominate our rural landscapes.

To grow these crops, industrial farms use massive amounts of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, which deplete our soil and pollute our air and water.

Much of this harvest will end up as biofuels and other industrial products—and most of the rest will be used in CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) or in heavily processed junk foods, which seem cheap only because their hidden costs don't show up at the cash register.

Industrial agriculture is unhealthy—for our environment, our climate, our bodies, and our rural economies.


A Better Way: Sustainable Agriculture

There's a better way to grow our food. Working with nature instead of against it, sustainable agriculture uses 21st-century techniques and technologies to implement time-tested ideas such as crop rotation, integrated plant/animal systems, and organic soil amendments.

Sustainable agriculture is less damaging to the environment than industrial agriculture, and produces a richer, more diverse mix of foods. It's productive enough to feed the world, and efficient enough to succeed in the marketplace—but current U.S. agricultural policy stacks the deck in favor of industrial food production.

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Now...just try and guess who it is that that controls ag policies...big ag = big money. They want big profits...they want to control land and family farmers get pushed off the land. You get junky processed food. They win...you lose. Obesity rates rise...fat people ARE stupider. Diabetes and alzheimer rates are increasing. Dumb people can be told how to vote. Drug companies can sell their drugs to the dumb people.

Everybody's happy except those who aren't making profits and aren't dumb? :D

Simplistic...but true?

Again, red herring. Industrial agriculture is wasteful, yes... But that has nothing to do with crops being GMO or not, but the specific method of agriculture. Non-rotation, heavy reliance on fertilizer, increased soil degradation. All problems with standard crops, not just designer crops.

This is like saying that since antibiotic X is a very expensive, ineffecrive drug, that all antibiotics are bad.

This is already being discussed elsewhere, isn't it? One hopes that a thread discussing the unsustainability of alternative fossil fuels remains about the unsustainability of alternative fossil fuels.

Really no sense in arguing with some of you guys. In your utopia of requiring every energy source as being "sustainable", it would lead to massive starvation in an unprecedented scale.

I remember reading in the 70's of the massive starvation that was predicted once the world population got to 6 billion. We are at 7 billion now with explosive population growth still in the offing. We have to find ways to continue to find ways to feed everyone.

Without massive industrial scale agriculture and world markets the planet will be doomed.

Will we have a generation or two to change?
 

The answers are multifaceted. We do need stability of population along with sustainable lifestyles. Educate our females and they tend to have far fewer children. Extend quality of life and health so our population is more productive. Redistribute some of the wealth to provide life and happiness to more of the population. And on and on . . .

This isn't easy. But I think we all agree something must be done.

All fossil fuels will diminish. How long till the tipping point is the only argument. Will it be long enough of a time span to make the necessary changes in technology and lifestyles?

I was not born in the West. I was raised in a country where hunger was a common occurrence, bad water and splotchy electricity. But we could sustain the family and community with what we grew and traded to nearby communities. I know this is not the sustainability all of you are talking about.

A sustainable industrial platform is what we need. That requires concentrated energy sources used efficiently.

Only if the west keeps up it's meat gluttony.

A lot of poor countries associate beef with prosperity. As third world incomes rise, so does beef production.

Again, though, wildly off topic...

The GMO's are designed to work with factory farming (and to pump up the profits of Monsanto etc.) Now that we have 7 or 8 "superweeds" that are not affected by Roundup, we see that the GMO emperor has no clothes.

Small scale, diverse farming has no need for GMO's. There is a lot of risk for almost no benefit other than the ease of factory farming. And after a brief time, that is no longer the case.

Edit: factory meat & dairy farms use antibiotics and growth hormones which are truly scary - eat local meat and antibiotic & hormone free eggs and dairy. And we have yet to mention endocrine disruptors in our carpets, sofas, pajamas, food packaging, etc.

Best bet? Get real. Buy basic foods. Cook them yourself. Avoid the processed stuff. If you avoid corn, soy, cottonseed oil, canola oil...so far at least you've reduced GMO exposure and many chemicals though you will still get some BPA in canned goods...and the usual sugar, chemical, and salt overload in any processed foods you do eat.

Most processed foods are from refined GMO junk...factory farmed. We really need a world full of people fed with this stuff....increasing rates of obesity...diabetes....alzheimers...these rates ARE INCREASING as factory farmed food is exported around the globe. :thumbup:

Stupid diseased people are ripe for further exploitation by Big Pharma. Remember...when the 1% win...we all win....because we all want to be rich.

Makes sense to me.....:D

Another easy fix is to stop factory farming meat - we feed cows and pigs and chickens (and fish for that matter) lots of high protein food - and they reduce all those calories and protein to 1/20th or even less! We need to eat less meat for our own health, anyway - and we need to re-integrate animals into small scale crop farms. Plants and animals on the same farm are completely symbiotic, and these farms *improve* the soil over time, rather than depleting it.

So if we suddenly had 20X more calories available than we do now, then we most certainly will *not* starve. And we would be a heck of a lot healthier, to boot. Grass-fed beef is far tastier than soy and corn fed beef, and the cows would not get indigestion (they evolved to eat grass) so we would have a lot less cow fart methane than we do now.

Nature doesn't have any waste. Neither should we.

Nature has lots of waste. The difference is that change in nature is so gradual that entire biosystems have had time to grow up around it. :D Part of the challenge is to find methods that fit seamlessly into these systems.

But industrial beef? Definitely a huge waste of resources. Hell, farmed beef, period is a huge waste of land.

Again, it saddens me that all GMOs are tarred by the sme brush based simply on the purported unethical practices of one company.

I live near the International Rice Research Institute. A non-proft dedicated to improving rice breeds in terms of yield, hardiness and Hybrid vigor. And they do use genetic modification in their research.

And not to develop pesticide dependent rice.

Yet their efforts have been frustrated by the furore and hysteria surrounding anything with the "GMO" tag. It's like being the one Afghani kid in an American public school after 9/11.

To say that genetic modification per se is bad is like saying that since antibiotics (again) are used in commercial farming, that all instances of antibiotics are bad.

Having had Typhoid Fever, a disease that's fatal without antibiotics, I would question any such assertion or blanket statement. Do we misuse and overuse antibiotics? Heavens yes! Should we stop antibiotic use completely? Hell no.

And the idyllic view that natural rotation and organic farming is all that's needed is a "one size fits all" solution to the problems of creating sustainable farming on a global scale. Not saying that we should not aspire to do either, but that we should sit back and look at the big picture.

My take, if it improve yields without creating ecological disasters downstream, increasing land use disproportionately or deiving already poor farmers deeper into poverty, it deserves further study... Whatever the method used.

Where is the waste in nature?

Neil - He's saying that if you look at parts of nature without looking at the entire ecosystem around it, there is waste. Carnivorous animals don't use every part of their kills, for instance. Something else comes in and eats what's left.

I'm still wondering why more people aren't growing their own food. Almost everyone has some kind of decorative plants that require nearly constant maintenance... most veggies would rather remain undisturbed to grow on their own.

I'm also wondering just how possible it is to get "legacy" seeds anymore... It's not like there's a veggie out there that hasn't been modified in some way.

I'm sorry I can't provide a reference, but I read (some years ago) about a organic farm on the East coast. They sold to upscale downtown restaurants and in the space of a two-car garage they had a chicken coop over a pig pen. The pigs ate the chicken poop. They were pulling $x0,000 a year out of 400 sq ft.


The same 1% that won't allow GMO labeling in the food supply is creating bomb-proof crypts in the most inaccessible places and filling them with seed banks.

So after *your* gone they can come out and party like it's 1999.

It is the fault of companies like Monsanto for using strong-arm tactics and some of the absurd legal moves they make...like suing farmers because their GM crops drift onto the farmers land. :eek: :D

Because the current WH guy SAID he wanted GMOs labeled...then hired a bunch of Monsanto people into his admin.

Most larger countries require the labeling of GM foods...except for Canada and the US?

I'm not BLANKET against GM mods...just the lack of REQUIRED research into their safety BEFORE they are put on the market.

The 'Monsanto Rider': Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity from Federal Law?

A so-called "Monsanto rider," quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013 Agricultural Appropriations bill, would require - not just allow, but require - the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement is completed. All the farmer or the biotech producer has to do is ask, and the questionable crops could be released into the environment where they could potentially contaminate conventional or organic crops and, ultimately, the nation's food supply.

I think Monsanto's plan might be to put so many GM mods into the genome environment where they cannot be retrieved to make ORGANIC a moot point.

Poison the planet for profit?

Shale gas again...
 

Fracking Our Food Supply | The Nation


Tonight’s guests have heard about residential drinking wells tainted by fracking fluids in Pennsylvania, Wyoming and Colorado. They’ve read about lingering rashes, nosebleeds and respiratory trauma in oil-patch communities, which are mostly rural, undeveloped, and lacking in political influence and economic prospects. The trout nibblers in the winery sympathize with the suffering of those communities. But their main concern tonight is a more insidious matter: the potential for drilling and fracking operations to contaminate our food. The early evidence from heavily fracked regions, especially from ranchers, is not reassuring.

Jacki Schilke and her sixty cattle live in the top left corner of North Dakota, a windswept, golden-hued landscape in the heart of the Bakken Shale. Schilke’s neighbors love her black Angus beef, but she’s no longer sharing or eating it—not since fracking began on thirty-two oil and gas wells within three miles of her 160-acre ranch and five of her cows dropped dead. Schilke herself is in poor health. A handsome 53-year-old with a faded blond ponytail and direct blue eyes, she often feels lightheaded when she ventures outside. She limps and has chronic pain in her lungs, as well as rashes that have lingered for a year. Once, a visit to the barn ended with respiratory distress and a trip to the emergency room. Schilke also has back pain linked with overworked kidneys, and on some mornings she urinates a stream of blood.

Ambient air testing by a certified environmental consultant detected elevated levels of benzene, methane, chloroform, butane, propane, toluene and xylene—compounds associated with drilling and fracking, and also with cancers, birth defects and organ damage. Her well tested high for sulfates, chromium, chloride and strontium; her blood tested positive for acetone, plus the heavy metals arsenic (linked with skin lesions, cancers and cardiovascular disease) and germanium (linked with muscle weakness and skin rashes). Both she and her husband, who works in oilfield services, have recently lost crowns and fillings from their teeth; tooth loss is associated with radiation poisoning and high selenium levels, also found in the Schilkes’ water.

It is sad they are ruining the environment for the sake of some gas and instant gratification. In North Carolina, there is a big push for fracking. The masses seem to oppose it here due to stories like this while a select few are for it because their pockets will be lined by the gas companies when they lease/sell their land. The gov't never thinks of about long-term costs and is always about the now.

A better solution:
Why don't they just hook up methane tanks to every toilet in american houses and capture that gas instead. I am sure what would create a much larger volume of gas than any land could hold. Then everyone is "recycling".

Methane generation works best in medium to large scale, though they do it on the backyard scale out here in the third world.

Transport of the product has typically been a problem. To get good energy density, you have to compress it.

Not hard to do, all you need is a few drums and the proper hoses and fittings.

Possibly the best use of wind power is to compress air; but it would compress methane just as well.

Back to the original poster, is the info in this link false info/speculation?

How Surging Shale Production Could Bring Oil Prices Down To $50 Per Barrel - Business Insider

I dunno. i've heard that break-even for existing facilities is $60, but industry people are saying optimum ROI for new facilities is at $80-85 per barrel. Current prices just about support new wells, $50 will not.

Wind compressing methane... More attractive than burning methane to generate electricity just to compress itself.