Katla - aligning earthquakes

It is worth commenting that the activity at Katla is beginning to increase again. But it is doing so along a couple of discernible lines at the moment.

Earthquakes in the last 24- hours around Katla (Icelandic Met Office)

I first noticed this yesterday as the small increase in earthquakes and that they seemed to fall along two planes.

Earthquakes on the 9th (Icelandic Met Office)

Given that this was an increase from a period of relative quiescence, albeit with the quakes that were occurring were still in the region of previous activity, it has started to become interesting again.

Earthquakes on the 7th (Icelandic Met Office)

And from the 5th:

(Icelandic Met Office)

So, we’ll see how this progresses.

An Icelandic volcanic eruption

Well this is interesting. I wrote a week ago about the pattern of earthquakes that was developing in the Mydralsjokull area of Iceland. However, earlier this year there was a growing pattern of earthquakes around the Grimsfjall region in Iceland, which is also known as the Loki volcano, There has now been an eruption in that region. And while the power of the volcano is already waning somewhat, there is some anticipation that the overall eruption might be larger than the Eyjafyallajokull eruption that happened last year, and the largest eruption at this site in over 100 years. At present the ash particles are being reported as larger than that from last year’s eruption, so that it likely won’t be as disruptive. It is also being blown northwest, and so does not threaten the main air corridors at the moment.

What makes it more interesting, and a little worrisome, however, is the line of strong earthquakes (i.e. above a level 3) that are shown by stars in the map below, and which run down from the current eruption towards Mydralsjokull, which is at the bottom. And these all happened in the last day. For convenience I have given the volcanoes their Norse names of Loki (which is where the current eruption is), Laki, which is the volcano that erupts along the line of the green stars, and Katla, which is the volcano at Myrdallsjokull. The largest of the earthquakes is a 4.6 and is down near Laki, rather than in the Loki region.

Recent earthquake activity in Iceland (Icelandic Met Office)

The recent low level of activity on the island (there hasn’t been a magnitude 3 since March, when usually there is one about every three days) suggests that there may be some energy to be relieved, and this might open one of the fissures at Laki. These are the big volcanoes which do bad things to air quality, not only in Iceland, but also often in Europe. We will have to see how this goes.

The rising number of earthquakes in America, not Iceland

This is just a short post drawing attention to a couple of things that are starting to look a little odd. The first was the subject of a post over at Chiefio’s website pointing out that there has been a recent doubling in the number of earthquakes per day along the Western coast. This led him onto a piece that suggests that the recent activity might be a pre-cursor to a volcanic eruption near Hawthorne, Nevada – since there have been over 500 of these quakes in that area. And if one goes to the USGS site that maps their location and strength, the latest image shows that activity is still ongoing.

Recent earthquakes in the Hawthorne area (USGS )

The concentration of activity around a fixed point argues more for volcanic activity than it does a growing risk of a major earthquake. However if one looks at the region in general there is also a lot of activity along the major fault lines through California. However that tends not to be as focused, suggesting that the normal movement along the faults is continuing, though intensified just south of the border.

Recent Earthquakes on the west coast (USGS)

The two phenomena may well be separate. Generally I look for a lack of earthquake activity along a fault line as an indicator that the fault is not moving in that region, and thus stress is building up, and a larger quake will be required at some time in the future to relieve that greater stress. And in that regard it is the zone without the current quakes along the fault path that is more worrying to me than the zones where there is a lot of quaking, and thus movement.

In contrast it is the focusing of lots of earthquakes in a small area that suggests that the cause of the quakes might be more due to volcanic activity. Though one really also needs the relative vertical location of the epi-centers to determine whether magma is moving towards the surface, which is generally a warning of something in the offing.

The other thing that has me a little puzzled is the opposite situation. I have been monitoring the quakes in Iceland since the eruption last year, as reported by the Icelandic Met Office, and recording all those quakes that exceed magnitude 3. (At the bottom of this post. I note that after seeing about a hundred quakes in the past year, there hasn’t been one (greater than 3) since March 12th. Which is kinda odd.

The combination of the two events may or may not be related, we will have to see how things progress, but it is worth taking note of and keeping a closer watch to see what happens next.

Some hopefully closing thoughts for now on Icelandic volcanoes

The re-opening of the European skies means, among other things, a couple of days of quiet here at Bit Tooth, as I have now left home on a somewhat circuitous trip to the UK. Hopefully I will arrive on Saturday morning, by which time a lot of the major disruption should be over. Public debate will likely now center on who was to blame and for what.

However as a follow-up to my earlier post on aircraft damage and the damage to fighters in particular, I do note that there are reports of two aircraft already having been damaged following the removal of the ban on flying, (H/t Admiral Valdemar) and that after Pinatubo erupted, aircraft damage was found in over 20 planes flying up to 1,000 km distant from the volcano.

This is probably, barring a major change in Iceland, my last post on this topic for a while – I expect that it won’t come up again for about a year until there is an eruption at Katla or Laki, potentially about ten times the size of the current event, and that the whole issue will come back into the headlines. So I thought I would explain why I think that there will still be an eruption further along the rift line, and how, simplistically why I expect this to happen. Call it a summary of the posts to date if you will.

Let me walk you through my thinking. Iceland sits on the spot where the plates that comprise the shell of the Earth, are slowly moving apart. The plate edges are marked in pink, and by the line of volcanoes, in this graphic.

Map of Iceland showing major volcanoes (The Times of London)

If you look at the Icelandic Met Office website, they show, every two minutes, where the latest earthquakes in Iceland have occurred over the past two days. Looking at the current picture, one can locate the earthquakes relative to the joint plane and the line of volcanoes.


Note that if you double click on the map it will enlarge – vide:

Area around Eyjafyallajokull, showing the current earthquakes there

It is not however Eyjafyallajokul that has my interest. Let me try and explain why. The two plates which lie either side of the line of volcanoes are moving apart at a rate of about an inch a year. As theplates move apart they pull on the rock that sits between them, so that it splits and cracks, and emits the energy release from that fracture that we call an earthquake. As the splits grow they create a weakness plane along the fault line. Under the fracture zone there is a magma that will force its way to the surface, when it finds a weakness of fracture plane that is large enough to start the magma flow.

Once the magma starts to flow it will open the fissure under pressure, and erode the walls of the passage until you get the standard round shape for the conduit that carries magma to the caldera where it is ejected. But the pressure of the flow also helps push the rock apart, and in the process can open adjacent passages in the rock under tension, allowing a secondary flow to establish. That will likely lead, within a year of so, to the more dramatic eruption of Katla, which sits under the Myrdalsjokull glacier.

But there has been a lot of activity up around the north end of the larger glacier near the peak called Grimsfjatt. This is sometimes referred to as the Loki volcano. And this may be creating the circumstances for a rupture that will equate to that of Laki, which is currently quiescent.

But stepping back a minute to look at the overall activities that occur when plates interact, what has been learned in places such as California, is that when the plates are moving together and not building up stress, then there are always a series of small earthquakes going on along the fault, as the ground accommodates the movement.

California quakes of the last two days

It is only when the earthquakes stop happening in a region that the stresses start to build up. And the longer there is between quakes, then generally the larger the quake is that marks the end of the quiescent period.

But those are compression/shear failures and movements. In Iceland the rock is moving apart under tension, with the added complexity of an underlying magma trying to escape through preferred fracture zones. Yet looking at the current location of the quakes in Iceland, there haven’t been any in the zone between Myrdalsjokull and Vatnajokull. Now a) this is where Laki lies and b) having been only watching for just over a week, this may be building large sand castles out of very dry sand, but nevertheless it is a little bit of a puzzler, and so, based on three different thought threads, I suspect that while the current eruption may rumble on for a while, and fade rapidly from the MSM, sometime within the next 18-months Iceland will be back in the headlines, posing a much greater problem for Europe.

Having said which, I’m still optimistic about getting into London this weekend, we shall see how it transpires.

European airspace 6:45 am CST

This image showing 128 aircraft in European airspace, would indicate that airlines are beginning to find ways of getting planes into the air. However the patterns show where the plume is still probably too dense to allow flights. Including the UK, where the Government is apparently going to send Navy ships to help.

And just to make you feel comfortable about listening to experts, this was the listing for Europe's ten most dangerous volcanoes (in terms of their impact on Europe) just four days ago:

Volcano . . . . . . . . .Country . . . . . .Affected population . . . Values of residences at risk
(US $billion)
1. Vesuvius . . . . . . . Italy . . . . . . . . 1,651,950 . . . . . . . . . . 66.1
2. Campi Flegrei . . . Italy . . . . . . . . . . 144,144 . . . . . . . . . . .7.8
3. La Soufriere . . . . .Guadeloupe, . . . . .94,037 . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8
Guadeloupe France
4. Etna . . . . . . . . . . . Italy . . . . . . . . . . 70,819 . . . . . . . . . . .. 2.8
5. Agua de Pau . . . . .Azores, . . . . . . . .34,307 . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4
Portugal
6. Soufriere . . . . . Saint Vincent . . . . . .24,493 . . . . . . . . . . .1.0
Saint Vincent, Caribbean
7. Furnas . . . . . . . Azores, . . . . . . . . . .19,862 . . . . . . . . . . 0.8
Portugal
8. Sete Cidades . . . Azores, . . . . . . . . . 17,889 . . . . . . . . . . . 0.7
Portugal
9. Hekla . . . . . . . ..Iceland . . . . . . . . . . 10,024 . . . . . . . . . . .0.4
10. Mt Pelee . . . . .Martinique, . . . . . . .10,002 . . . . . . . . . . 0.4
France
Hekla is the only one from Iceland that makes the list, which, given that Katla is likely to be perhaps ten times as large as the current eruption from Eyjafjallajokull, and may well go in the next 2 years perhaps underscores the occasional need to question expert opinion.

A short update on the Iceland volcano and Chinese earthquakes

Because there have been larger earthquakes (indicating possibly the passage of magma) under the ice of the glacier at Eyjafjallajokull and there are now fissures under the glacier, the authorities have issued an evacuation order for the area. h/t Jon at WUWT. There was a 3.1 earthquake two days ago, and there have been two (one at 3.5 and one at 3.0) more recently. The larger one is at the location of the upper green star in the map. It is at the other end of the range of volcanoes that run between the two and have been the source of the large eruptions of the past. The lower star, at Eyjafjallajokull is the one that everyone is concerned about.
(Update the eruption has now started and the evacuation is underway.)

Map showing the latest earthquakes (green means within the last 24 hours, and a star means it is over magnitude 3.0) (Icelandic Met Office) .
The concern at the moment relates mainly to the melting of the glacier, and the resulting floods that will follow. There is not, at the moment, a great deal of evidence of a major eruption further up the line, which is where the big ones have happened in the past. However the linear activity of the recent quakes there, and then the larger one, makes it an area to keep watching. I am keeping a list of the dates, location and sizes of the quakes above 3.0 at the bottom of this post. I am also going to start adding depths, since the northern green star earthquake is only 1.1 km below the surface. However the ash plume from the volcano is starting to cause air traffic problems over Norway.



Update This is the photo of the eruption that mg talks about in the comments:


The comment notes:

The three red arrows show the locations of the eruptions under the ice. The blue arrow points north.

The ice layer was 650 ft thick, before the eruption below it. Flooding that it has caused has already started to give problems. And if you want scale on the top picture Katla, the icecap to the East of yjafjallajokull is 12 miles away and under the Mýrdalsjökull glacier. The new fissure is about 1.2 miles long and the eruption is considered to be 10 to 20 times more powerful than that last week. There are web cameras set up to view the original eruption, and likely also the new one.

I have also just heard about the major earthquake in western China. I was in Xining City and drove around parts of Qinghai Province last year. One of the things that struck me is the number of small coal-fired brickworks, that were producing fired brick, and supplying a change from the mud brick of which most houses were constructed. Sadly that modernization was not fast enough, and most of the casualties are reported being buried under wood and mud brick buildings, though there are some concrete buildings (including a government one) that have collapsed.

Location of the Chinese Quake (BBC )

The area is remote, and difficult to drive around, so that rescue may be more difficult than in the previous large quake, and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims.

An earthquake in Iceland

Update Since I wrote this post I have discovered that Icenews had the location of the Katla volcano wrong in the figure below. I have corrected the location in a separate post. My apologies.

There have been a couple of earthquakes that have exceeded magnitude 7 over the last few days. First there was the 7.2 magnitude earthquake near Mexicali on Sunday, which destroyed more than 5,000 homes. Then there was the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck Northern Sumatra at 5:15 pm (CST) today. The latter was smaller and will apparently not produce a tsunami of the type that killed over 230,000 people in 2004, in Sumatra. Nevertheless the impact is likely to have been severe.

And yet I keep checking with the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, that began spewing lava on March 21st. Remembering that it has usually presaged a much more violent eruption from the nearby Katla volcano, which being under the Mýrdalsjökull glacier, will likely generate results that are expected to be much more severe. Vulcanologists have been expecting an eruption from the volcano for some time. It forms part of the set with Laki and Eldgia which are considered to be some of the most powerful volcanoes in the world.

Thus when I read that there has just been a 3.7 magnitude earthquake in the Katla region, moving away from the initial eruption and between Katla and Laki, my concerns just grew a little. There are already reports of toxic gas emissions from this smaller eruption, which could warn of much greater problems if much higher volumes of gases such as sulfur dioxide are ejected with a subsequent eruption from the volcanoes to the North-East of the current eruption.

Location of the earthquake relative to Katla, Eyjafjallajokull is further west.

The volcano in Iceland

The current volcanic eruption in Iceland raises a question of the Precautionary Principle but one calling for an opposing action to that most commonly sought in ameliorating damaging climate change. If I can summarize the situation in a somewhat condensed version, the current eruption in Iceland at the Eyjafjallajokull site has now been going on for a couple of days (video) and is throwing a plume of ash up to 5 miles into the overlying air.

View of the plume from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption (scienceblogs). More photos here

What should be a concern, it appears, however, is that this particular volcano, although in itself not that large, is often a precursor to the eruption of the Katla volcano, which is nearby but further north- east. While the current eruption started away from a glacier, the Katla lies under the Myrdalsjoekull glacier, and the precedents are not good.

"Eyjafjallajokull has blown three times in the past thousand years," Dr McGarvie told The Times, "in 920AD, in 1612 and between 1821 and 1823. Each time it set off Katla." The likelihood of Katla blowing could become clear "in a few weeks or a few months", he said.

The second Katla eruption has, historically, had much greater impacts since it has had the power to inject large volumes of particles and gases into the atmosphere that create a sufficiently dense cloud that sunlight is reduced, harvests are affected and famines result. For example when the nearby Laki fissures erupted in 1783 the results that were reported included:

Iceland's Laki volcano erupted in 1783, freeing gases that turned into smog. The smog floated across the Jet Stream, changing weather patterns. Many died from gas poisoning in the British Isles. Crop production fell in western Europe. Famine spread. Some even linked the eruption, which helped fuel famine, to the French Revolution. Painters in the 18th century illustrated fiery sunsets in their works.

The winter of 1784 was also one of the longest and coldest on record in North America. New England reported a record stretch of below-zero temperatures and New Jersey reported record snow accumulation. The Mississippi River also reportedly froze in New Orleans.

The last eruption of Katla was not that severe, although there was severe flooding. But it can be violent, throwing large volumes of material into the air. The consequence of the Laki eruption of 1783-4 (it lasted for eight months and ejected over 9 cubic miles of basaltic lava and a quarter of the population of Iceland died from starvation, the effect on winter temperatures in the US was evident.

(Sigurdsson 1982)

But it is not the fine particles that apparently cause the most climate impact, rather the large volumes of gases that also are ejected and turn into acid aerosols that contribute to the disastrous consequences. It has been projected that there were some 8 million tons of fluorine and 120 million tons of sulphur dioxide released. To put this in context, during the Mount Pinatubo eruption (which also had a short term cooling on global climate) the volcano is projected to have emitted some 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and that this lowered the global temperature by perhaps 0.8 deg C in 1992. (The aerosols reflecting back more solar energy into space.)

Mount Pinatubo erupting (USGS photo)

The fissures themselves, from which the Laki lava flowed, stretch some 16- miles though not as a continuous crack, but rather the lava flowed from about 130 craters.

Laki craters (climate4you)

The general locations of the Katla to the earlier Laki and Eldgja eruptive flows is shown here:

Location of the Laki, Katla and Eldgja fissures, the current eruption is further south and west, on the hidden side of the Mydalsjokull glacier.

The severity of the impacts of these eruptions on the global climate and the resulting devastation on the harvests is a matter of record. We know that there are more coming, and, from past history the damage will be great.

That record suggests that there will soon be another serious eruption that, on past performance, will also eject large quantities of sulfur dioxide gases into the atmosphere and induce another period of cooling.

Since the previous evidence has shown that this cooling has not been good for the global health, perhaps it might be about time that folks started working on what can be done to stop, or collect these large volumes of gases before they become too predatory. Certainly the problem of neutralizing the gas or otherwise collecting it or storing it is significant (but then so is that for carbon dioxide). However we know where it is going to come from, and some of the mechanics of how it will migrate upwards. There are large unknowns in terms of how we might capture, control, or neutralize a lot of the acid-forming gasses, but the size of the problem has never stopped us before.

And if the problem were to be addressed by the nations of the world, perhaps we could, in time, assuage some of the known negative effects from the global cooling that we can now expect as the Icelandic eruption continues. This cooling may well already be more certain than near term global warming, and more immediately likely to occur, so under the same Precautionary Principles that are driving the huge investments in climate change already, ought we not be spending our time right now trying to find ways to stop the impact of these massive eruptions on the health of the globe.

Silly thought – but one that suggests that the problems don’t always only have one side, and that we might find out by visual observation the down-sides of too much cooling and its effect on people and agriculture, perhaps sooner than we would like.

P58. Pick Points

Back in November 2007, with relatively little notice Con Edison ended a service begun by Thomas Edison in 1882. It was the transmission of electric power by direct current (D.C.) in New York. There was fierce rivalry back then between Edison, who favored D.C, and George Westinghouse who was pushing Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (A.C.).

Some 125 years later, Westinghouse finally and absolutely has prevailed as the world has moved to AC. Or has he? Back a couple of years ago I was at an ASPO meeting when Dave Rutledge (who is inter alia a Division Chair at Caltech) mentioned the resurrection of DC power transmission. At first I thought this was a mis-speak so I asked him about it afterwards, and no I had heard him right.

So there I was, today, half-listening to Dr Chu build up to explaining what the Helios Project at the Berkeley Lab was all about, when I heard him comment on the Smart Grid, and the benefits of transmitting current across the country using D.C. lines rather than AC. Unfortunately the feed I was watching (this was from last July) did not have a timer on it, but this was about a third of the way into the talk.

Dr. Rutledge had mentioned that one of the places that uses D.C. is in Denmark, and sure enough, cables between Norway and Denmark do transmit power using D.C., and they are adding more.
In modern systems high voltage D.C. lines are less expensive and suffer lower transmission power losses than A.C. lines, but require more expensive transformers to raise the voltage to the high levels required. One of their advantages, however, is that they make it easier to integrate remote generating capacity into a network. This will become more important as renewable energy sources dotted around the country start to be available for integration into a new Smart Grid in greater numbers.

While the wave energy program in Portugal is in hiatus, a project to further study its use in Hawaii is making progress with the system to be upgraded. There is a difference between tidal energy and wave energy, and in Scotland Aquamarine is picking the latter to be a better bet than the former. The wave energy program is known as Oyster. Further a new Israeli turbine is being developed which is claimed to reduce costs, and there is a competing idea being developed in Ireland.

Gazprom anticipates that its exports will drop some 17% this year and that prices will also drop. It is therefore not surprising that they are looking more favorably at LNG and new projects that will open this additional avenue for sales. It does not seem that long ago that they were arguing the other way, with all their efforts being put into pipeline transmissions. This was particularly true for Shtokman development, though now this is where business is anticipated to gestate.

While the volcanic eruptions at Mt Redoubt are apparently calming down , they are generating a bit of a problem for the local oil production facilities

With oil terminal operations suspended at Drift River, Cook Inlet oil producers are running out of space to store crude. Chevron shut in two of the 10 platforms it operates Monday night, spokeswoman Roxanne Sinz said Tuesday. The Bruce and Anna platforms normally produce about 71,000 gallons of oil a day, Sinz said.

Production was reduced by about 21,000 gallons daily at the Dolly Varden platform because of ash, Sinz said. . . . .
In Cook Inlet, with Drift River out of commission and no means to move oil to market, only seven days of storage remains at the production facility at Trading Bay, while tanks at Granite Point to the north have about four more days of storage, Chevron's Sinz said.

When the space is gone, either Drift River has to reopen or the platforms must be shut in, Sinz said.
Cathy Foerster of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission said some wells could be forever lost if they are not continually producing. But crews can continue to pump oil from those wells into other wells if there are no tanks to store the oil, she said.

At the news conference Tuesday, representatives from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, the Coast Guard and Cook Inlet Pipeline Co., which owns Drift River, said their main concern continues to be the 6 million gallons of crude stored at the terminal. The facility was evacuated last week, but the pipeline company has sent crews to inspect it when it's been safe to fly.

And Russia is proposing a nuclear power station for Bangladesh . The facility would produce 1,000 MW and help meet the growing need (and shortage) of power in that country.

And in China they are getting the wires to build superconducting cables to move electricity. Superconducting cables can handle up to ten times the power of conventional cables and have additional benefits when transmission lines become congested.

P55. Pick Points

Given the size of a couple of the stories a little less than half-a-dozen stories of interest today:

Redoubt, the volcano in Alaska that was being monitored when I flew over here has now erupted, and though it threw a plume of ash some 60,000 ft into the air, the wind was such that Anchorage, 110 miles away, was not covered. And the heavy snow falls turned into enough water that much of the ash that landed was washed away to a distance of up to 22 miles. By 4:30 am Monday there had been five eruptions, back in 1989 when it last erupted the eruptions lasted for four months. It has since erupted again, and appears now to be building a lava dome.

Source Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S. Geological Survey


More recently the air had cleared enough to allow planes to be unwrapped and to take off again and resume service.

Source Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S. Geological Survey

It has been postulated, by Lamb among others, that the fine dust high in the atmosphere can cause a reduction in the Earth temperature, though the effect of one volcano really depends on the size and volume of the ash generated and I suspect this is not producing enough yet to be significant.

Last year, shortly after he was inaugurated President Medvedev travelled to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan with the President of Gazprom to lock up control of the natural gas supplies for those countries. Now the agreement may turn out to be an expensive one for Gazprom. The company has seen its own production drop 25% and so relies on the agreement, but that was at a $409/tcm, and now the price is falling to $260 per tcm.

Gazprom currently buys about 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas, 15 bcm of Kazakh gas, and 7 bcm of Uzbek gas, amounting to about 14 percent of the company’s total production in 2008, according to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta report. Rising transit costs and falling consumer demand in Europe and Russia mean that the company’s operating costs in Central Asia are becoming a big burden. The company has already scaled back development plans for the region.

Gazprom officially acknowledged in early March that gas production in 2009 may decrease by 7 percent this year. But analysts say the cut in output could likely to be much higher.

Poland meanwhile, which had an agreement with the “middleman” between Gazprom and the Ukraine (RosUkrEnergo), an entity which has supposedly been kicked out of the deal, is now negotiating directly with Gazprom. The hope is to get the agreement in place so that the Poles can fill their storage tanks before winter comes, when supply becomes more of an issue. Meanwhile Ukraine is reducing the amount of gas that it plans on buying from Gazprom by 17.5%.. However part of this is that Ukraine needs someone to invest in their infrastructure and update it, and the hope is that this will come from Europe which is not sitting too well with the Russians.

And speaking of natural gas, CERA has announced a new analysis which sensibly says:

North American natural gas is entering a new era in which supply is no longer constrained, according to a new Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA: undefined, undefined, undefined%) multiclient study, Rising to the Challenge: A Study of North American Gas Supply to 2018. A revolution in technology has unlocked "unconventional" gas resources, dramatically changing the prospects for the market. Demand, rather than supply, will be the challenge for the market going forward, accentuated currently by the economic crisis.

Not wishing to be argumentative, but one wonders if CERA has been monitoring the rates at which drilling rigs are being shut down?

I would normally not take up this much space in a Pick Points, but the report goes on to say

Given the increased productivity of unconventional wells, the study concludes that it is not necessary to increase drilling activity to maintain - or increase - production. After years of developing unconventional gas with its long-lived production, in the aggregate, the average decline rate will fall. This means, the study says, that a smaller quantity of new production is required to offset natural production declines. CERA does expect production to increase, with dry gas productive capacity growing from an average of 53.5 Bcf/d in 2009 to 60.6 Bcf/d in 2018 in the lower 48 United States, and from 15.8 Bcf/d in 2009 to 19.6 Bcf/d in 2018 in Canada.

Sometimes I wonder what reports they are reading, the average life of an unconventional (read gas shale) well is less than 3 years. The average well is depleting 60% in the first year. I have posted on this before and these are not my numbers. Well, as they say, the next eighteen months will see which of us is correct. And LNG imports may change the picture a little, Wood Mackenzie are expecting them to rise. On the other hand the steps by the Indiana Governor to allow synthetic natural gas from coal won’t likely make much of a difference.