Department of Energy Reduces Marcellus Shale Estimates

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

January 24, 2012 | 7:03 PM

The U.S. Department of Energy has revised their estimate of how much natural gas could be extracted from the Marcellus Shale. The projection adds more uncertainty to how long the state’s drilling boom will last.
Last summer, the U.S. Geological Survey released an estimation that was 80 percent lower than the Department of Energy’s projection at that time. That large disparity forced the D.O.E’s Energy Information Agency to take a new look at the data. On Monday, the Department of Energy released its “Annual Energy Outlook for 2012.” That report reduced their previous estimate of potential recoverable gas reserves by two-thirds.
Travis Windle is a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group based in Canonsburg, Pa. He says it’s not easy to project a hard and fast number.

“There’s a lot of variables, there’s a lot of unknowns,” said Windle. There’s a lot of information we’re trying to gather about the host of geological factors that determine how much natural gas is viable and can be produced in a way that’s economical.”

Those variables include the thickness of the shale, the depth of the shale, and whether the shale contains dry or wet gas. Windle says there’s a history of ebb and flow with energy resource projections. He says new technological developments could make more of the gas available to drillers, and so change future estimates of recoverable gas. Although the D.O.E’s report reduces their previous estimates of “unproved, technically recoverable” natural gas within the Marcellus, it predicts natural gas production will continue to grow. And as the U.S. relies more on domestic sources of natural gas, imports from Canada will decrease. The report also says by 2016, the U.S. will be a net exporter of liquefied natural gas.