Comment on Skeptic questions sustainability of shale-gas boom in Ohio

Proponents of shale-gas drilling have said the United States sits on the verge of energy independence amid surging output and what has been described as a 100-year supply of natural gas.Count Texas-based financial consultant Deborah Lawrence Rogers among those skeptical that the shale energy boom is real or sustainable — fiscally or environmentally.Rogers, part of a small movement gaining more attention over its views about shale drilling’s long-term prospects, sees a short-term bubble that will bring higher economic and environmental costs.“There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors here,” she said of America’s shale frenzy in a recent interview with the Beacon Journal.The drilling industry has overstated the number of jobs shale exploration will create, the volume of natural gas to be produced and the safety of drilling, Rogers contends.Plenty of natural gas and liquids exist in Ohio’s Utica and other shale formations, Rogers said, but the real question is how affordably the commodities can be extracted.Projections of huge gas supplies provide a false and unrealistic picture because they don’t adequately account for the cost of production declines of nearly 40 percent a year that come with drilling in shale, she said.Production from shale wells falls off dramatically after the first year, Rogers said, and drillers will have to spend tens of billions of dollars annually to boost production to make up for those declines.American energy companies would have to spend $42 billion to annually drill 7,200 new wells to maintain current production as individual shale well volumes drop, she said.She questions whether companies are overstating the productivity of wells and the size of their reserves.Rogers says the only way to fight shale development is on “an economic basis.”There are big questions surrounding the financing of shale operations; the shale drilling mathematics do not add up, she said.According to Rogers, shale wells show high depletion rates.