A New Estimate Of US Natural Gas Reserves Is The Highest In History

Wikimedia CommonsA biennial survey of U.S. gas reserves has just printed its highest-ever estimate, reports the Financial Times.

The Potential Gas Committee says there is now 2,384 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas in America, up 486 tcf from the previous all-time high in 2010.

Most of the new reserves came from recalculations in the Atlantic, Rocky Mountain and Gulf Coast areas.

Here's why it went up, according to PGC Director John Curtis, via PGC's release:

Our knowledge of the geological endowment of technically recoverable gas continues to improve with each assessment," PGC director John Curtis said. "Furthermore, new and advanced exploration, well drilling, completion and stimulation technologies are allowing us increasingly better delineation of and access to domestic gas resources—especially ‘unconventional’ gas—which, not all that long ago, were considered impractical or uneconomical to pursue.

Consequently, our present assessment, strengthened by robust domestic production levels, demonstrates an exceptionally strong and optimistic gas supply picture for the nation.”

Thanks to revisions for the Marcellus Shale, PGC now ranks the Atlantic area as the country’s richest resource area, with 33 percent of total gas resources. The Gulf Coast and Rocky Mountain areas combine for much of the rest.