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Forecast for Natural Gas Production Shows 3 Percent a Year Growth

Crew on a drilling rig in Carroll County
Tim Rudell
/
WKSU
Crew on a drilling rig in Carroll County

The U.S. oil and gas industry may be rebounding after nearly four years of decline. The International Energy Agency is now forecasting a nearly 3 percent per year output for the next five years. And, the agency predicts that shale gas will lead the way with the Marcellus and Utica plays of the Appalachian basin ramping up as much as 45 percent by 2022. 

Shawn Bennett, Executive Vice President, Ohio Oil & Gas Association
Credit OOGA website
/
OOGA website
Shawn Bennett, Executive Vice President, Ohio Oil & Gas Association

Shawn Bennett is executive vice president of the Ohio Oil & Gas Association. He credits new technologies and the build-out of infrastructure as reasons. He also credits the size of the shale deposits.

“To put this in perspective, if you take Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio -- if you combined those three states and formed them into one country -- we would be the third largest natural gas producer in the world.”

The United States is currently the No. 1 country, supplying more than a fifth of global output.  

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Tim Rudell
Tim Rudell has worked in broadcasting and news since his student days at Kent State in the late 1960s and early 1970s (when he earned extra money as a stringer for UPI). He began full time in radio news in 1972 in his home town of Canton, OH.