James Van Blaricum
There is an abundance of natural gas in North America, but it is a non-renewable resource, the formation of which takes thousands and possibly millions of years. Therefore, understanding the availability of our supply of natural gas is important as we increase our use of this fossil fuel.
This section will provide a framework for understanding just how much natural gas there is in the ground available for our use, as well as links to the most recent statistics concerning the available supply of natural gas.
As natural gas is essentially irreplaceable (at least with current technology), it is important to have an idea of how much natural gas is left in the ground for us to use. However, this becomes complicated by the fact that no one really knows exactly how much natural gas exists until it is extracted. Measuring natural gas in the ground is no easy job, and it involves a great deal of inference and estimation. With new technologies, these estimates are becoming more and more reliable; however, they are still subject to revision.
A common misconception about natural gas is that we are running out, and quickly. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. Many people believe that price spikes, seen in the 1970's, and more recently in the winter of 2000, indicate that we are running out of natural gas. The two aforementioned periods of high prices were not caused by waning natural gas resources - rather, there were other forces at work in the marketplace. In fact, there is a vast amount of natural gas estimated to still be in the ground. In order to understand exactly what these estimates mean, and their importance, it is useful first to learn a bit of industry terminology for the different types of estimates.