Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Boom Or Bust? Mapping Out The Known Unknowns Of Global Shale Gas Production Potential, Jérôme Hilaire, Nico Bauer, Robert J. Brecha

Physics Faculty Publications

To assess the global production costs of shale gas, we combine global top-down data with detailed bottom-up information. Studies solely based on top-down approaches do not adequately account for the heterogeneity of shale gas deposits and hence, are unlikely to appropriately capture the extraction costs of shale gas. We design and provide an expedient bottom-up method based on publicly available US data to compute the levelized costs of shale gas extraction. Our results indicate the existence of economically attractive areas but also reveal a dramatic cost increase as lower-quality reservoirs are exploited. At the global level, our best estimate suggests …