H/T to Anonym in Unthreaded, for pointing us to this report at Bloomberg. It seems that extractable reserves in the Marcellus Shale are much lower than previously thought:
The U.S. Energy Department cut its estimate for natural gas reserves in the Marcellus shale formation by 66 percent, citing improved data on drilling and production.
About 141 trillion cubic feet of gas can be recovered from the Marcellus shale using current technology, down from the previous estimate of 410 trillion, the department said today in its Annual Energy Outlook. About 482 trillion cubic feet can be produced from shale basins across the U.S., down 42 percent from 827 trillion in last year’s outlook.
I wonder how important that caveat - "with current technology" - is.