Decline analysis using Arp's equations is the primary empirical method used in the petroleum industry for estimating future reserve recovery and generating production forecasts. The development of tight gas and in particular shale gas reservoirs as important new sources of gas production has highlighted a concern with the hyperbolic form. That is, the expected ultimate reserve (EUR) is highly dependent on the choice of 'b' value. Recent work by Ilk et al has proposed a new decline formulation called the "power law loss-ratio" that they claim is more general and robust than Arps. Essentially, the power law loss-ratio predicts that 'b' changes over a well's producing life and the 'D' and 'b' values can be replaced with more predictable parameters called 'D ∞ ', 'ˆi D ', and 'n'. The purpose of this paper is to test the applicability of the power law loss-ratio method with readily available public data. Several wells were analyzed using Arps hyperbolic decline and the power law loss-ratio method. The results of each will be presented along with a comparison of the estimates of ultimate recoverable reserves.