California Chokes on Alternative Fuels Proposition

California rejected Proposition 10 by a wide margin in yesterday's voting as 60% of the state's 9.5 million voters said no. The Alternative Fuel Vehicles And Renewable Energy Bonds Initiative Statute was strongly supported by T. Boone Pickens and Aubrey McClendon to promote natural gas as an important alternative for transportation fuel in the state.

The measure was strongly opposed by the Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, California Nurses Association, California Federation of Teachers, Consumer Federation of California, Consumer Watchdog, the Utility Reform Network, and California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

Description of Bill

Engelder-Appalachin Fracture Systems-Platts-Marcellus Shale Presentation

Terry Engelder has provided his Platts Marcellus Shale presentation for posting. It is available by clicking either the link below, or in the "Technical Papers" section on the sidebar. He also offered a few comments:

The hard variables lending to his estimate were provided, in the main, by Chesapeake.

Professor Engelder notes, "the more important number comes from the potentially accessible fraction of the GIP which I placed arbitrarily just under 400 Tcf recoverable (One-third of the play). Range has always told people that they think recovery will be patchy…….exactly what this percentage is has yet to be discovered. "

He also pointed out those key elements of his and Gary Lash's prior 50 tcf noting, "Gary Lash and I were conservative to a fault by assuming just a 50 foot thickness (we know the Marcellus is much thicker). This meant that were also conservative in our calculation for GIP/section. Finally, we only allowed for a recovery factor of 10%. "

Factoring 100' average thickness and 30% recovery(Chesapeake) to that original estimate gets you to 300 tcf, "which is not far from taking the 1100 Tcf given by Chesapeake and allowing access to only 33% of the GIP."

Finally, he noted, that "we are all on the same page of the playbook in SIZING the resource."

Engelder- Platts Presentation