The U.S. Could See Record Natural Gas Production In 2022

Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion in the US is set to grow to a new record in 2022, at 93.3 bil­lion cubic feet per day (Bcfd) and will con­tin­ue to rise fur­ther, exceed­ing 100 Bcfd in 2024, a Rys­tad Ener­gy analy­sis shows. As a result, the per­for­mance of the country’s key gas basins is going to attract increased inter­est from investors and mar­kets, with CO2 emis­sions inten­si­ty, cap­i­tal effi­cien­cy and poten­tial bot­tle­necks draw­ing close scrutiny.

The country’s out­put reached a record in 2019, at 92.1 Bcfd, but pro­duc­tion declined sub­se­quent­ly to 90.8 Bcfd in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Rys­tad Ener­gy expects that 2021 vol­umes will fall even fur­ther, to 89.7 Bcfd but the trend will quick­ly change as the effect of the pan­dem­ic sub­sides and activ­i­ty builds up across the country’s major gas basins.

Rys­tad Energy’s analy­sis reveals that the Appalachi­an Basin was US’ best-in-class in 2020 when it comes to CO2 emis­sions inten­si­ty, and the region is set to report a record-high cap­i­tal effi­cien­cy in 2021, as rein­vest­ment to main­tain out­put will drop to its low­est ever. Mean­while, the Hay­nesville play will offer the largest gas out­put growth going for­ward, risk­ing bot­tle­necks unless more pipelines are approved.