[Peakoil] new Nature feature "The Fracking Fallacy"

[Mason Inman]

I thought you all would be interested in a new feature of mine in this
week's issue of *Nature*, "The Fracking Fallacy
<http://www.nature.com/news/1.16430>."

My article covers a set of on-going studies on U.S. shale gas by a team at
the University of Texas, which has done the most rigorous work of any
publicly available studies. (Perhaps you already know all about their
work.) The team's forecasts are much below those by the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA) as well as by industry analysts, calling
into question the optimistic outlooks of decades of rising natural gas
production.

The results are "bad news," says Tad Patzek, head of the University of
Texas at Austin’s department of petroleum and geosystems engineering, and a
member of the team conducting the in-depth analyses. With companies trying
to extract shale gas as fast as possible and export significant quantities,
Patzek argues, "we’re setting ourselves up for a major fiasco."

*Nature* also published a related editorial, "The Uncertain Dash for Gas
<http://www.nature.com/news/the-uncertain-dash-for-gas-1.16464>."

If you're interested in more background information and details on the
Texas team's work, and what I've found about how the EIA makes its
assessments and forecasts, see the posts on my on-going project The Frack
Lab <http://beaconreader.com/mason-inman> (*now free to read*). If you'd
like updates when I post new articles there (about two per month), you can sign
up here <http://eepurl.com/9Lpiz>.

Best,
Mason


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Mason Inman, science writer
data journalism project: The Frack Lab <http://beaconreader.com/mason-inman>
upcoming book: The Oracle of Oil <http://oracleofoil.com>

Twitter & Skype: masoninman
M: +1-916-527-4014, O: +1-415-508-4493
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