Talking the Boom

Wall Street Journal writer Russell Gold is out on tour for his new book "The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World." Here are two talks below, one from the New America Foundation and one of my favorite writers, Steve LeVine. The second from Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy and Jason Bordoff.

In both cases, Gold is asked the "how long will it last question," with LeVine even bringing up "peaking" and decline rates around the 30 minute mark of the New America video. Gold dodges a bit here and brings up the always popular strawman of how people are still producing oil from the Kern River oil field. But again, the question here isn't WILL people still be producing oil, of course they will. We'll still be fracking 40-50-60 years from now. The bigger question is a question of production rates. How much per day? How long can the growth in production of US shale continue? And following, once US shale production begins to decline, will worldwide shale production be able to pick up the slack?