Future supply potential of US oil and natural gas

The prospect for long-term stable supply from United States sources of oil and natural gas is good. It is a prospect quite different from the pervasive view of the 1970s of a rapidly depleting, high-cost resource base. Gas drilling over the past six years is barely half the level averaged in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and the average wellhead price, in real terms, is the lowest in 15 years; and yet gas reserve additions have equaled in volume the reserves added when gas drilling and wellhead prices were twice the level of the past six years (Figure 1).