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PITTSBURGH—Dr. Terry Engelder, who in no way resembles Dr. Strangelove, relates how he learned to stop worrying and love the boom.
“In 2011, the [Pennsylvania] governor [Tom Corbett] asked me to project the cycle that production would be in the future,” the Pennsylvania State University professor told attendees at Hart Energy’s recent Marcellus-Utica Midstream Conference & Exhibition. “I projected that by 2020, there would be 5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) produced.
“Well, it turns out I was wrong, as [author Bill] Powers is implying,” Engelder admitted. “This is the result right now: We’re heading toward producing 5 Tcf in Pennsylvania within the next year. I was wrong by as much as 100% in being low.”
Powers and his co-author, Art Berman, published Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth in 2013, arguing that the 100-year supply of cheap natural gas is a lie perpetuated by the energy industry and that, far from energy independence, the U.S. would soon face a gas shortage.
Midstreamers in the audience, engaged in a mad scramble to provide infrastructure for the ever-growing supply flowing from the Marcellus and Utica shales, chuckled.
“They have stood up and accused me of being many things, including Peter Sellers playing Dr. Strangelove,” Engelder said. He showed a slide of a blog, with an image from the 1964 film, that accused him of appointing himself “Arbitor (sic) of Best Interests and Necessary Sacrifices” for the people of Pennsylvania.
He also noted that one critic attending his fracking debate with Professor Anthony Ingraffea of Cornell University wrote in a notebook of audience comments: greed equals death. The incident appeared in Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold’s book, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Engelder labeled his attackers as neo-Malthusians, or contemporary followers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century economist Thomas Malthus, who argued that population growth would strain natural resources such as food. This theory was found to be operative in earlier agriculture-based societies, but was less relevant following the industrial revolution. His critics have argued that Malthus neglected the role of technological improvements and the positive aspects of population growth.
A critical element of Engelder’s accurate projection for the Marcellus was his hypothesis early on that synclinal layers of the Marcellus would outperform anticlinal layers. Synclines are folds in geologic structures in which half of the fold dips toward the trough, as opposed to anticlines, which dip away from the crest.
A 2008 investor and analyst presentation from Chesapeake Energy offered a cumulative production curve that, as optimistic as it was, would be surpassed by actual output from the Marcellus. In fact, production nearly doubled what was expected.
In his outlook for the Marcellus, Engelder continues to see promise.
“Now, not all of the [potential wells] will be drilled,” he said, “but these are going to be a lot of fun projecting forward and this is going to have a huge impact on America; it’s going to have an even larger impact on the state of Pennsylvania.”
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