Pennsylvania fracking boom goes bust
By Will Bunch, Daily News Staff Writer
It was just a couple of years ago that fracking was booming in upstate Pennsylvania's Bradford County, and Janet Geiger, a retired hospital worker living on a 10-acre spread near the New York border, could count on getting a $300 to $400 check every month from the gas giant Chesapeake Energy Corp., which was drilling under her land.
But both the gas and the checks - with the financially ailing Chesapeake now claiming big deductions - dwindled until finally, in March, a check never showed up. "I thought the mail had gotten lost," said Geiger, 74, but after a week she finally reached someone with the Oklahoma gas driller who explained "they didn't have a buyer [for the gas] that month."
But Geiger said that she'd already seen the signs of a slowdown, that rural streets once clogged with the massive trucks of the drilling firms were mostly empty now, while new motels that had been hastily thrown up or expanded to accommodate a flood of out-of-state workers had only a couple of cars in the parking lots.
Read more at the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
US shale gas project 'biggest regret' for outgoing Shell boss
Outgoing
Shell chief executive Peter Voser says in an interview with the
Financial Times his biggest regret during his time at the company is the
failure of the company’s huge bet on US shale gas.
The Financial
Times says Shell has invested at least $24bn in so-called unconventional
oil and gas in North America. But the investment has yet to pay off and
in August Shell said it would carry out a ‘strategic review’ of its US
shale activities.
‘Unconventionals did not exactly play out as planned,’ Voser is quoted as saying.
He
also admitted exploration results in US shale beds had been
disappointing. ‘We expected higher flow rates and therefore more
scalability for a company like Shell,’ he said.
Read more at
Dutch News.
Shale Bubble
We’re being told that – thanks to technological advances like hydraulic
fracturing and horizontal drilling – the US is undergoing an energy
revolution, leading us in a few short years to become once again the
world’s biggest oil producer and an exporter of natural gas. According
to the Oil & Gas Industry and their proponents, “fracking” will
provide the US with energy security, low energy prices for the
foreseeable future, more than a million jobs, and economic growth.
Pointing to record low natural gas prices and increased production, policymakers and the media on both sides of the political aisle, as well as investors and utilities, have bought the hype and are shifting their plans and proposals with the expectation that the shale revolution is here to stay.
The Reality is that the so-called shale revolution is nothing more than a bubble, driven by record levels of drilling, speculative lease & flip practices on the part of shale energy companies, fee-driven promotion by the same investment banks that fomented the housing bubble, and by unsustainably low natural gas prices. Geological and economic constraints – not to mention the very serious environmental and health impacts of drilling – mean that shale gas and shale oil (tight oil) are far from the solution to our energy woes.
See the full report at
ShaleBubble.org
US shale gas project 'biggest regret' for outgoing Shell boss
Monday 07 October 2013
Outgoing Shell chief executive Peter
Voser says in an interview with the Financial Times his biggest regret
during his time at the company is the failure of the company’s huge bet
on US shale gas.
The
FT says Shell has invested at
least $24bn in so-called unconventional oil and gas in North America.
But the investment has yet to pay off and in August Shell said it would
carry out a ‘strategic review’ of its US shale activities.
‘Unconventionals did not exactly play out as planned,’ Voser is quoted as saying.
He also admitted exploration results in US shale beds had been
disappointing. ‘We expected higher flow rates and therefore more
scalability for a company like Shell,’ he said.
- See more at: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2013/10/us_shale_gas_project_biggest_r.php#sthash.CNn5l8qf.6bLkEKok.dpuf
US shale gas project 'biggest regret' for outgoing Shell boss
Monday 07 October 2013
Outgoing Shell chief executive Peter
Voser says in an interview with the Financial Times his biggest regret
during his time at the company is the failure of the company’s huge bet
on US shale gas.
The
FT says Shell has invested at
least $24bn in so-called unconventional oil and gas in North America.
But the investment has yet to pay off and in August Shell said it would
carry out a ‘strategic review’ of its US shale activities.
‘Unconventionals did not exactly play out as planned,’ Voser is quoted as saying.
He also admitted exploration results in US shale beds had been
disappointing. ‘We expected higher flow rates and therefore more
scalability for a company like Shell,’ he said.
- See more at: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2013/10/us_shale_gas_project_biggest_r.php#sthash.CNn5l8qf.6bLkEKok.dpuf
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