Fracking Insiders See No End To Boom

Despite official predictions that the U.S. energy boom will pop like a bubble in the next 20 years, people engaged in drilling for oil and gas—from the financiers to the frackers—see no end to boom times or low gas prices, industry insiders said in Chicago Friday. Late last year the International Energy Agency predicted the U.S. would surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest energy producer by 2015 but would run out of gas, so to speak, in the 2020s. The U.S. Energy Information Administration made a similar assessment  last year, predicting production would decline after 2020 and then increased demand would drive up gas prices. But such glum assessments underestimate not only the amount of domestic shale oil and gas, but also the ingenuity of those  tapping it, the insiders suggested Friday at the Energy Forward conference hosted by the Chicago Booth Energy Group. Most shale oil wells today start strong but taper off quickly compared to conventional wells, and some cease production in 7.5 to 8 years. But drilling technologies are evolving quickly to change that, said James King, vice president for unconventional multi-stage completions with Baker Hughes, an oilfield services company...more