Natural Gas: Way Beyond A Miracle

There are so many efficiency efficiencies coming on line with the natural gas industry, like new fracting techniques and managing the whole natural gas enterprise...the price of natural gas can go to mind boggling low levels and these guys still are going to make massive profits.

This massive thing is going to restructure our nation...

***That be fracting expanding the petroleum and natural gas fields way beyond what we could imagine just a few years ago. 

Drillers Unleash ‘Super-Size’ Natural Gas Output

Applying newer fracking methods to existing field offers potential for more and cheaper fuel

 

Drillers Unleash ‘Super-Size’ Natural Gas Output

Applying newer fracking methods to existing field offers potential for more and cheaper fuel

 

Newer production techniques being applied to a natural-gas rich area that stretches from northeast Texas into Louisiana are affecting U.S. pricing because of its potential to ‘super-size’ output in an area close to many fuel pipelines. 

 

Updated Sept. 1, 2015 7:12 p.m. ET
 

The U.S. may have far more natural gas than anyone imagined, all reachable at a profit even with today’s bargain-basement prices. 

Experimental wells in Lou isiana by explorers including Comstock Resources Inc. CRK -10.49 % and Chesapeake Energy Inc. CHK -3.07 % are proving highly lucrative thanks to modern drilling techniques and the sheer volume of fossil fuels that can be coaxed out of the ground.

The trick is applying supersize versions of the horizontal-drilling and fracking techniques that worked successfully elsewhere to an area that hasn’t seen this approach yet. The gains come from extending the lateral portions of wells by thousands of feet and pumping them full of enormous volumes of sand, chemicals and water to flush out more hydrocarbons.

So far, the impressive results have been confined to a small area in a single Louisiana parish near the Texas border. But if the approach works across the giant Haynesville Shale, which spans 120 miles across both states, the era of low American gas prices could extend for decades into the future, experts say.
 

“There’s a large likelihood that the United States will be enjoying very low gas prices for a very long time, maybe 20 years,” said Mark Papa, who has monitored Haynesville developments as a partner at Riverstone Holdings LLC, one of the biggest energy-focused private-equity firms in the U.S.

The field produces 8% of the nation’s natural gas, making it the second largest after the giant Marcellus Shale in the Northeast. Because it is located in Louisiana, near several interstate pipelines, potential export facilities and industrial consumers, an increase in gas production in the Haynesville has an outsize impact on gas prices across the entire country.

The cost of natural gas matters because the fuel increasingly powers the U.S. economy and is critical to the Obama administration’s push to reduce carbon emissions in electricity generation. American gas consumption has risen at a 2.4% annual growth rate for the past decade, while demand for coal has fallen by 2.7% and oil by less than 1%, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Gas now is used to generate about 30% of U.S. electricity and heat nearly half of all American homes…