Reply #75: My take on it

[JohnyCanuck]

US natural gas peaked in 71/72 but then you guys turned to Canada and Mexico to to fill in for the missing US production. Now Mexico has peaked and Canada is hitting the wall as well with tightening supply and increasing Canadian/US demand, and to cap it off this winter you've also got to contend with missing supply from the Gulf of Mexico after Katrina.

When Canada signed NAFTA, it ceded total control of its oil and gas reserves. Canada currently makes up about 13% of the USA gas supply. Canada is running out of gas too:

"Outwardly the production projections of the NEB, EUB and GESI are confusing and even contradictory. But they really carry the same message: the limits of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) are being recognized. We could gradually increase consumption of the basin's reserves over the next decade and accept sharply falling supply thereafter (the NEB result). We can rapidly increase consumption through drilling quick, short lived deliverability wells and live with an early rapid supply decline (the EUB result). Or, we could redirect more activity to larger reserve plays that require greater lead times and thereby accept an earlier, but gradual supply decline (the GESI result)." http://tabla.geo.ucalgary.ca/NatGasCan/opipaper.pdf

Mexican gas production reached a plateau in 1998 and has had a downward slope of around 2% ever since. http://dieoff.com/mexgas.gi? (Insert an "f" in place of the "?" after the "gi" to pull up the chart of Mexican production. The graphic screws up the window size if activated inside the thread /jc)

<snip>

If, like the vast majority of Canadians, you are dependent on natural gas to heat your home, ponder this thermostat-shattering truth for a moment. The largest natural gas find in Western Canada in the past 25 years is now playing out in a marshy area of northeastern BC near the Alberta border.

Some analysts expect the Ladyfern field to gush about a trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, which to a layman's ear might sound like a lot of burning power. But Ladyfern probably contains just enough fuel to heat all the gas-fired homes in Canada for a year or two at most. And it's a clear freak of nature. A typical new gas well, in fact, produces barely enough gas to heat 90,000 homes for a year.

Now add some more disturbing math to this natural gas picture. Canada now produces 6.2 tcf of gas a year, which just barely meets domestic and export demand. That represents about one-fifth of North America's gas consumption, which is still growing by 2% a year thanks to gas-fired electrical generation. "We need 6.2 Ladyferns a year to just keep up with gas consumption and stand still," explains Rob Woronuk, 60, a veteran Calgary gas analyst and one of the nation's independent natural gas watchdogs. "The really scary part is that we are finding a Ladyfern only every 25 years."

http://www.dieoff.org/synopsis.htm