Faced with diminishing supplies of domestic crude oil andrnincreased demand for energy, the US has come to rely onrnimported crude and domestic supplies of natural gas. Duringrnthe last decade US natural gas production has risen about 10%,rnbut it still fails to meet demand. This failure has resulted inrnsignificant increases in natural gas prices. We believe thatrndeveloping a reliable method to forecast US natural gasrnproduction rates and reserves will benefit gas producers,rnconsumers and policy makers.rnThis paper presents one methodology for developingrnforecasting models for predicting U.S. natural gas production,rnproved reserves, and annual depletion to year 2025 using arnstochastic (time series) modeling approach. The methodologyrnis not mechanistic. A mechanistic model would examinernindividual geologic settings, exploration success, the physicsrnof gas production and the rate of exploitation for provinces,rnbasins, and reservoirs. However, to do so would result in anrnextraordinarily massive model that would be difficult, if notrnimpossible, to develop and use. Instead we used a simplerrnapproach which takes advantage of established trends in easilyrnobtained published data.rnVarious time series models were tested and validated usingrndata that are not used in the mathematical development of thernmodels. Having adequately validated these time series modelsrnusing historical data we believe that they can be used to makernat least short time forecasts. Comparison of results of thisrnstudy with other published forecast is also presented. Ourrnforecasts show that U.S. gas production rate will maintain arnproduction plateau of 18.7 Tcf/yr from 2005 to 2008 afterrnwhich gas production will increase gradually from 19.0 Tcf/yrrnin 2010 to reach 22.5 Tcf/yr in 2025. We predict that U.S. gas production will have an average annual rate of increase ofrn0.5% from 2005 to 2015 after which the average annual rate ofrnchange of production will increase to 1.2% for the period ofrn2015 to 2025. Our forecasts also show that U.S. gas depletionrnrate will increase from 10.6%/yr in 2005 to 13.4%/yr in 2025.rnWhile the reserves discovery rate increases, U.S. gas provedrnreserves are predicted to increase from 197 Tcf in 2005 to 215rnTcf in 2010. Afterwards, the gas proved reserves will increasernat an annual rate of 1.3% and are expected to reach 263 Tcf inrn2025.
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