WSJ "Bad Call" Article

These Initial Production rates on HS wells are now up to 24mmcf/d ....Good article on the bust of the LNG import market on the Gulf too. Read the full article at the WSJ here:


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123378467642449289.html?mod=googlenews_wsj


Shale Shock
Forecasts can swing abruptly when it comes to figuring out where natural gas is needed and how much. Expectations of future supply can change quickly, too. As this market grows and adjusts, once-lauded business plans can quickly be swept aside.
"There is still a lot of uncharted territory," says Bob Fryklund, vice president of industry relations at energy consulting firm IHS Inc. in Houston. "People are still trying to understand how this market works."
A few years ago, most people looked at U.S. natural-gas production and saw it entering a slow, terminal decline. But in fact, the opposite has happened. Rising prices and easy financing encouraged a horde of companies to develop "unconventional" gas fields such as the Barnett and Haynesville shales, located, respectively, in north Texas and along the Texas-Louisiana border. These shale wells, once thought to be too costly and difficult to exploit, succeeded beyond everyone's expectations.
"We went through a period of high prices that allowed a higher-priced supply to mature enough that costs have come down," says Jen Snyder, head of North American natural-gas research for Edinburgh-based consultant Wood Mackenzie.

The unconventional wells are producing more gas with each passing season -- and becoming less expensive to drill. Recently drilled wells in the Haynesville shale are starting off at 24 million cubic feet a day and are profitable even with natural-gas prices as low as $4 per million British thermal units. "Huge," was the succinct appraisal of the Haynesville shale recently by a BMO Capital Markets energy analyst.
This surge of new gas has lowered domestic prices and reduced the need for imports. Meanwhile, companies that bought into the earlier vision of soaring imports and strings of new terminals went from being Wall Street darlings to also rans