This is a great article that was actually being circulated within the industry before it went to publication in World Oil. I think that Berman is most likely correct and we may have overestimated EUR’s from unconventional gas plays.
The Hyperbolic production declines curves everyone has used for forecasting could be a serious illusion. Consider that to date we still don’t have any mature data to work off of when it comes to shale gas plays.
Certain companies, which I won’t mention here, have simply over hyped their reserves time and again. The bottom line is that best guesses are still guesses, and we are starting to get some hard data that undercuts expectations. Now, don’t get me wrong, as you can see in Berman’s article there are some individual wells that outperform, but these may be spurious.
Apparently, there are others that agree.