Tight Oil Reality Check (2015)
September 17, 2015
Much of the cost-benefit debate over fracking has come down to the perception of just how much domestic oil and gas it can produce and at what cost. To answer this question, policymakers, the media, and the general public have typically turned to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), which every year publishes its Annual Energy Outlook (AEO).
In Drilling Deeper, PCI Fellow David Hughes took a hard look at the EIA’s AEO2014 and found that its projections for future production and prices suffered from a worrisome level of optimism. Now, in Tight Oil Reality Check: Revisiting the U.S. Department of Energy Play-by-Play Forecasts through 2040 from Annual Energy Outlook 2015, Hughes explores how the EIA’s projections and assumptions regarding tight oil have changed in AEO2015, and assesses the AEO2015 against both Drilling Deeper and up-to-date production data from key tight oil plays.