CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

The industry and investment community is all worked up over the various oil and natural gas shale plays in North America, but little attention is given to what could go wrong with these plays.

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The first issue is that not very much drilling has been done in some of the most promising shale plays. Since there is very little development and production history, it is difficult to determine the average estimated ultimate recovery (EUR), initial production (IP) rates and decline curves of wells here. Thus any estimates of the total resource potential are unreliable.

Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:CHK), which has 510,000 acres in the Haynesville Shale, uses an average EUR of 6.50 Bcfe, an IP rate of 14.1 million cubic feet equivalent per day, and a first year decline of 85%. However, the oldest Chesapeake Energy well in the Haynesville Shale is only nine months old, and it is difficult to attribute this data to the entire play.

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