Ohio's Reporting Continues to Delay Clearer View of Utica Shale Potential

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From the Zanesville Times Recorder:
Art Berman is a shale skeptic. 
Berman, an energy consultant in Houston, has been a dissenting voice on the viability of recently discovered oil and gasfields in Louisiana, Texas and Pennsylvania. He may very well end up a doubter of the economics of Ohio’s Utica Shale as well but right now, he said, it’s impossible to take a side. 
“One of the problems with the Utica Shale play is that nobody — nobody — has the ability to determine how long these wells are going to last,” Berman said, before noting the companies themselves may keep this information private. 
Ohio only requires companies to report their production volumes once per year, rather than monthly as many of the traditional oil and gas producing states do. That limits Berman and other independent analysts from estimating how gradually or sharply these horizontal wells deplete the oil and gas trapped in the shale.
Read the rest of the article here.

Companies had to have their data to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources by March 31.  As of today, we are still awaiting the ODNR's report on the Utica shale's production for the past year.

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