New York Times Hat-Tips Fracking … Well, Sorta
Thursday, September 24th, 2009 | 0 Comments
An article in today’s New York Times entitled “Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries” sheds light on the “hot streak” of new energy discoveries around the world, including the various natural gas shale plays right here in the United States.
This from Jad Mouawad’s report:
It is not just oil that is benefiting from the exploration boom. Repsol, Spain’s biggest oil company, said this month that it had discovered what could turn out to be Venezuela’s biggest natural gas field. In recent years, companies have found substantial natural gas reserves in the United States, from shale rocks once believed to be impossible to drill.
One of the key technologies that has made accessing these huge natural gas reserves possible, of course, is hydraulic fracturing. Without hydraulic fracturing – a 60-year safe and well-regulated technique – trillions of cubic feet of clean-burning natural gas, energy that heats homes, runs factories, create sgood jobs and fuel economies, would remain trapped underground, buried beneath miles of impermeable rock.
And a Grand Junction Sentinel editorial today also praised such energy production technologies:
Although natural gas received little mention at the U.N. Tuesday, new technology has dramatically increased the amount of gas available in the past few years.
The Marcellus Shale, which stretches from West Virginia through Pennsylvania and into New York, has been ground zero for America’s natural gas production boon. And its economic effects are already being felt in small, rural counties across the region, and will continue to be for years to come.
Today’s Williamsport Sun-Gazette provides a snapshot:
The development of natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale is “a once-in-100-year opportunity” that will exceed – on an economic level – previous resource booms, such as the lumber industry, economist John C. Felmy said Wednesday.
“This town was built on a boom. This is an opportunity that could be every bit as big, but it could last for decades instead of a short time,” Felmy, a chief economist with the American Petroleum Institute, said during a community meeting hosted by the Marcellus Shale Committee at Pennsylvania College of Technology’s Klump Auditorium.
Larry L. Michael, Penn College’s Workforce and Economic Development executive director, said a recent study performed by the college in conjunction with Penn State Cooperative Extension shows that job opportunities are likely to increase dramatically in the northcentral region of Pennsylvania due to natural gas development.
“Most of those jobs will be blue collar,” Michael said.
Over the next five years, gas development will create about 8,000 full-time direct jobs in the region, he said.
“That is a significant impact on our region,” Michael said.
The article, entitled “Committee provides update on gas drilling,” added this:
D’Amico added that any time an area has a commodity in abundance, it attracts other industries that need that commodity to the area, thus creating additional jobs.
The industry could create up to 174,000 jobs by the year 2020, he said.
Without hydraulic fracturing, the abundant energy resources that it delivers to American consumers, families, retirees and small businesses, would not be possible. While a clear majority of the American public support environmentally responsible domestic energy production – which helps stabilize energy costs and drive down foreign imports – some in Washington would rather impede, block or altogether halt home-grown energy from reaching those who need and rely upon it the most.
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