Fox News and Fox Business
January 5, 2009

“The largest, fastest, richest shale formation is the Marcellus, 95,000 square miles stretching from New York to Tennessee and through this suddenly booming state of Pennsylvania. I am telling you, it is a gold rush.

“Towns left for dead are now seeing rural landowners pull down recent contracts worth $5,500 an acre; 20 percent royalty fees on the gas extracted from their overgrown brush lands.

“A study by Penn State University concludes shale exploration created 29,000 jobs in Pennsylvania last year; another 98,000 expected in 2010. Another study found 70,000 jobs were created in Texas through exploration of that state’s shale.”

“Only in the last six years or so have energy companies developed this new combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies and brought them to this area of the country. It involves drilling down a mile or two into shale formations of rock. Then using high pressure blasts of water, sand and chemicals to loosen up the natural gas buried in the shale rock. They then extend a horizontal drill a half mile east or west to extract the reservoirs of gas. Boy are there [natural gas] reservoirs.”

NOTE: To view these segments, click HERE, HERE and HERE. This story will continue throughout the day on Fox.

CNBC’s “Mad Money”
January 4, 2009

Anadarko CEO Jim Hackett:

“These shale plays are important they’re bringing new resources to the economy, thereby driving prices down for consumers, providing more supply.”

“The Chinese get it, the Indians get it. They understand that natural resources are a very important part of the health and welfare of any country. And the less we focus on that, the more at risk we are. [We] have resources here in the United States that can be developed environmentally soundly today – we’ve had them for decades – and all we continue to do is put them more and more off limits and that’s a prescription for failure. We talk out of one side of our mouth, saying we want to be less dependent on countries that aren’t friendly to us and yet, we don’t fully develop the resources we have, particularly in natural gas, which is a cleaner burning, domestically-based fuel … That’s crazy.”

NOTE: To view this CNBC segment, click HERE.

Shale drilling risks minimal compared to economic benefits
Prof. Bernard L. Weinstein
Shreveport Times
January 3, 2010

“Fifteen years ago, no one in the United States, or north Texas for that matter, had ever heard of the Barnett Shale — except maybe a few geologists. Today, it’s the largest natural gas field in the U.S. producing four billion cubic feet a day. What’s more, the Barnett Shale has added a new dimension to the North Texas economy, supporting thousands of jobs and generating millions in tax revenue for local governments and school districts.

“Hydraulic fracturing has been used in nearly one million wells across the U.S. Nonetheless, careful studies by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ground Water Protection Council haven’t revealed a single case of drinking water contamination from shale gas drilling. That’s because the fracturing occurs far below the location of drinking water, and the gas wells are encased in steel and concrete to ensure isolation from ground water. All but one percent of the fracturing mixture is made up of water and sand, so the small amount of chemicals and additives is well diluted.”

NOTE: Click HERE to view this op-ed online.