PCI Fellow David Hughes and Energy Policy Forum’s Deborah Rogers reports on shale oil and gas were featured in this article at The Guardian. For more on both reports see PCI’s shalebubble.org site.

From the article:

A Post Carbon Institute study authored by geologist David Hughes, who worked for 32 years as a research manager at the Geological Survey of Canada, analysed US production data for 65,000 wells from 31 shale plays using a database widely used in industry and government. While acknowledging that shale has dramatically reversed "the long-standing decline of US oil and gas production", this can only:

 

"… provide a temporary reprieve from having to deal with the real problems: fossil fuels are finite, and production of new fossil fuel resources tends to be increasingly expensive and environmentally damaging."

 

Despite accounting for nearly 40 per cent of US natural gas production, shale gas production has "been on a plateau since December 2011 – 80 per cent of shale gas production comes from five plays", some of which are already in decline.

Read full article