Gas production from the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania and West Virginia is up 50% versus 2012 and Pennsylvania alone has pumped out 1.5 trillion cubic feet of gas this year with another 1.7 trillion on the way for the remainder of 2013. Despite the peculiar government policies on LNG, low priced natural gas has continued to prove itself as a worthy adversary for other energy types.
Now with booming production the equivalent of 550 million barrels of oil, this energy source is actually cutting into production from the Gulf of Mexico, a first time happening. Advances in technology even since the drilling began has allowed companies to drill more gas with less rigs and has saturated the Northeast market with inexpensive energy. Now the prediction is for that gas to start flowing to the South and Midwest.
Marcellus production this year “has definitely outpaced our expectations,” said Diana Oswald, a Bentek energy analyst, and it’s changing long-established national energy trends. For example, when serious shale drilling started in Pennsylvania in 2008, output barely registered on a national level, and most of the Northeast relied on natural gas that was being pumped from the Gulf of Mexico or from Canada through a network of pipelines.
Via: floatingpath.com
