Study finds US production would dip under hydraulic fracturing bill (6/9/09)

Oil & Gas Journal

Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor

WASHINGTON, DC, June 9 -- US oil and gas production would drop 20.5% over 5 years if federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing becomes law, the American Petroleum Institute said on June 9 as it released a new study.

By 2014, gas production could fall by 4.4 tcf, or 22%, and oil production by 400,000 b/d, or 8%, according to the study by IHS Global Insight, “Measuring the Economics and Energy Impacts of Proposals to Regulate Hydraulic Fracturing.”

API released the study as US Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said he would sponsor companion legislation to the bill which Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo), Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY), and Jared Polis (D-Colo) introduced on June 9 to bring hydraulic fracturing back under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

The well completion process, which producers say is essential to produce oil from the Bakken shale and gas from the Marcellus and other US shale formations, was exempted from SDWA enforcement under the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

“Drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus shale across much of Pennsylvania is part of our future. I believe that we have an obligation to develop that gas responsibly to safeguard the drinking water wells used by 3 million Pennsylvanians,” Casey said.

“We already have private wells contaminated by gas and fluids used in hydraulic fracturing. We need to make sure that this doesn’t become a statewide problem over the next few decades as we extract natural gas,” he continued.

Eliminating hydraulic fracturing would be catastrophic to US oil and gas development, resulting in 79% fewer well completions and drops of 45% in US gas production and 17% in oil production by 2014, the IHS Global Insight study found, according to API.

“More than 1 million wells have been completed using this technology. Unnecessary regulation of this practice would only hurt the nation’s energy security and threaten our economy,” API Pres. Jack N. Gerard said.

Contact Nick Snow at nicks@pennwell.com.

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should help us in HS area, the O & G boys got permission from the Army Corp to use the Red River for all the water they will ever need
I'm not sure I see the connection to using river water. I think the regulations under consideration are about contaminating the ground water, not about about using up the ground water.

They seem to be blowing this out of proportion. The legislation is about regulating fracking. They're arguing like fracking would be shut down entirely by this legislation.
1
The tree huggers won't be happy until everyone is walking and using candles to light their homes.
This is true
Don't forget it has to be beeswax or tallow from freerange cattle who died from natural causes candles, not those nasty petroleum paraffin candles, and don't forget the CO2 filters on the exhaled breath.
God forbid for the drillers if one of those environmental extremists find some kind of rare, almost extinct, micro-organisms in one of those core samples, huh?

Seems like when the Fed Gov gets involved in these sorts of things, the extremists come crawling out of the woodwork!
Look at the timber industry under federal control!
Okay Les - Checked out IHS Global. Realize, I'm not here to debate/argue/donnybrook. I'm just checking sources, not going to argue reliability & validity. My thoughts are there might be a sliver of bias, energy companies are their customers.

Still on the fence (at least it's not barbed wire), gone to look for more - sesport :0)

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