U.S. Natural Gas Production Significantly Being Increased

Natural Gas production is going up by a lot in the United States. This was noted at Peak Oil Debunked about a month ago.

The peak oil people such as Mike Ruppert and Matt Simmons were saying in 2003 and since then that natural gas production was heading for a sharp decline.

Now even some peak oil people are changing their tune. Gail at the oildrum has agreed that natural gas production will increase in the USA

Natural gas production can be ramped up by nearly 50% by 2020. My [Gail at theoildrum.com ] interpretation of what is happening is that there has been a technological breakthrough, probably in the area of shale gas production of natural gas.

Stocks benefiting from the Haynesville natural gas play

Chesapeake (CHK) is the diversified approach, Petrohawk (HK) is the concentrated way, and Goodrich (GDP) seems to be the small cap approach. Haynesville is a southeastern shale deposit in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.

The U.S. has enough natural gas resources to last up to 118 years, or 2,247 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), according to the study by Navigant Consulting for the American Clean Skies Foundation based on a mid-2008 estimates.

Canada Natural gas and oilsands
In Canada, The Horn River basin as 500 trillion cubic feet in place. 9-16tcf from the Ootla region of the Horn River for Apache Corp alone.

Canada's Oil and Gas sector outlook from June 2008.

B.C.'s Horn River Basin, near the Northwest Territories, has generated early estimates upwards of 28 tcf (trillion cubic feet) in potential shale gas reserves. To the south lies the Montney sand, shale and siltstone tight gas play, which the B.C. government pegs at 80 tcf of tight gas in place.

In the Saint Lawrence Lowlands of Quebec, Forest Oil Corp. compares its Utica shale gas discovery (estimated four tcf potential) to the legendary Barnett shale in Texas. On the East Coast, wildcatters are testing the potential of the Frederick Brook shale formation of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

In a February report, Raymond James Ltd. calculated that a move from vertical wells to horizontal improved Montney economics from break-even to a 27% expected internal rate of return.

Massive cost increases have bedeviled development of Canada's Arctic gas potential. In the Mackenzie Delta, three natural gas discoveries total 5.8 tcf. Further north in the Arctic islands, 16 gas discoveries amount to a further 17 tcf. Benoit Beauchamp, executive director of the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America and a former Geological Survey of Canada field geologist in the Far North, estimates the remote region's potential at 117 tcf of gas plus nearly four billion barrels of oil.

Canada's oilsands motherlode - Alberta estimates that its buried treasure totals 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen in place - could require fresh capital in the stunning range of $300 billion. That estimate, released by the Canadian Energy Research Institute in November, assumes that all announced projects by oilsands producers and upgraders proceed. Production in that case would soar to six million barrels per day by 2027. David McColl, an economist with the Calgary-based think tank, says capital expenditure on that scale would require a long-term stable oil price upwards of $60 (U.S.) WTI per barrel.