The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

ny times shale gas article

yep, pretty much just enough truth to sound credible but obviously written to buttress the NY & PA anti-shale gas crowd. Regarding the economic angle in the story: everyone in the business knows that many shale gas wells are uneconomic. At this time it is cheaper to drill and complete a large number of wells over a wide area with a high failure ratio than to use other exploration techniques to identify higher probability subsets of economically viable production targets. I suspect that companies like XOM and the larger service companies do not expect this to always be the case and thus their reasons for buying up smaller companies and continuing to build capability in the shale gas business in spite of low NG prices.