Audio By Carbonatix
We can argue and cheat and take all the money we want based on all the secret side deals we can surreptitiously sign, but that doesn’t mean anyone will want to frack us: That’s the lesson from the latest numbers produced by state regulators, which show natural-gas production continuing its free fall in the first four months of 2013.
It’s a matter of demand: While prices have inched up some, they’re still too low to get energy companies fracking again, especially when the oil fields are calling. Statewide oil production ticked up in every month of 2013, the Dallas Business Journal reported, while natural gas production kept dipping, both in the Barnett Shale and elsewhere.
Eventually this should correct itself: The U.S. government is investing billions of dollars in exporting facilities, to help create global demand for our natural gas. Soon enough we’ll be able to more easily send it to China so they can use it make more stuff us to buy.
Although eventually, researchers say, we’ll be buying the gas from them, too:
In short, the eventual synchronization of supply and demand will serve to both moderate the demand for exports from the U.S., as well as put downward pressure on natural gas prices. In the same way that crude oil has become a global market, so will natural gas. This will come about as a direct result of new, significant natural gas discoveries and eventual production in Australia, East Africa and probably China — perhaps other countries as well.
