Huge Re-Evaluation of the Marcellus -- Not a Bakken Story

Huge "thank you" to "anon 1" regarding the Marcellus. Look at these numbers, folks:

The Marcellus Shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids according to a new assessment by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS).

These gas estimates are significantly more than the last USGS assessment of the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian Basin in 2002, which estimated a mean of about 2 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF) and 0.01 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. 

Link here. 

Repeating: the old estimate -- 2 trillion cubic feet of gas; the new estimate -- 84 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Repeating: the old estimate -- 0.01 billion bbls of natural gas liquids; the new estimate -- 3.4 billion bbls. (By the way, 0.01 billion = 10 million bbls -- a very far cry from 3.4 billion -- wow!

3.4 billion vs 0.01 billion. I can't even get my arms around that difference. That's huge.

I know I'm going to get lots of hate mail, but can you imagine how the economic recovery would be going in this country if we took advantage of our natural resources in a responsible way, rather than extending permitorium after permitorium.

I am literally blown away by the differences in those estimates. And much of that is based on new horizontal, fracking technology developed here in the Bakken.

And I believe MRO was one of the first to develop that horizontal fracking technology, but I'm starting to forget my Bakken history.

If I am misunderstanding the numbers above, I apologize and will correct the post.

By the way, here's the same story, different link, in case one of the links break (and I'm sure they will become subscriber links soon). And still an additional link, just in case. Okay, one more, from the Wall Street Journal.