Abstract: The Natural Gas Resource Base: An Economic Perspective

Robert L. Brown

Using the 1992 NPC Natural Gas Study as a basis, this paper will discuss the importance of understanding several key dimensions needed to describe the natural gas resource base and its expected contribution to future gas supply. In order to adequately describe the natural gas resource base, factors other than size--such as costs, producibility, technology impacts over time, the rate of development and industry's expected behavior--must also be addressed. These and other factors determine the amount of gas that a resource base can supply over time, given some starting point and future economic projections. There have been many published estimates of the resource base, and most focus only on the size, while few deal explicitly with these other factors that must be understood to project upply. This paper will describe the approach taken by the NPC to address these important parameters and discuss the results. It will also address parameter sensitivities considered by the NPC and the resultant impacts on supply.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90986©1994 AAPG Annual Convention, Denver, Colorado, June 12-15, 1994