In 2010 the great, Groningen Gas Field in the Netherlands' had about 36 TCF of recoverable gas left in it. Its operated by NAM, or Shell and Exxon; as late as 2019 it was producing 19 BCM of gas per day on a much reduced rate.
Draw down and re-pressurization of the field over the years caused earthquakes to occur as early as 1994 and by the end of 2015 there had been 900 seismic events directly related to Groningen Gas Field, 254 of which were over 1.5 on the Richter Scale. In 2018, 15 events occurred, several over 3,0 and in late 2019 a 3.6 occurred that broke grandma's china in some homes. That was all she wrote for the Dutch; the field is now shut-in and is set to be decommissioned by the first of 2023, all that gas stranded.
Natural gas in Europe is currently selling for $25 USD/MMBTU.
We're crammin' so much stinking produced water into the Permian Basin in West Texas it has had just about the same number of seismic events as the Netherlands, including three 3.0's in the Midland Basin in the last year alone, a 3.5 just last week 15 miles NW of Midland. Water to oil ratios in the Delaware Basin are approaching 6 BW to 1 BO and rising.
The rig count in the Permian Basin is going up and within the past 12 months the Railroad Commission of Texas has issued over 850 new permits for SWD wells in the Permian.
We don't let no stinking earthquakes scare us, no sir. Texas is on a mission to drain all of its remaining oil and gas resources first, to export to Asia, including China (who is going to now sell it back to us !!) and nothing is going to stop us !
Stand back and watch.
By the way, even at $5.50 USD/MMBTU at Henry Hub, the Permian Basin is still flaring over 750MMCF of associated gas every damn day. And...the truth is, natural gas prices are as high as they are in the US, in spite of all those war horse wells (?) in the APP Basin, because we chose to export the shit as fast as can, just like oil. In other words, the last of America's hydrocarbons don't often benefit Americans...
"Overall American dry natural gas production is rising. But it's not increasing so quickly as to offset surging U.S. gas exports via pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes, which have been setting all-time high records this year. Scorching summer heat waves and low natural gas inventories have also driven natural gas prices higher over the past few months." Oilprice.com
What's the irony?
We're headed down the same road as the Dutch, but at least the Dutch were smart enough to keep their gas, in their country, for their people.
In the U.S., we're not.
