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Jewish World Review Oct 31, 2011 / 3 Mar-Cheshvan 5772 Viva the shale gas revolution By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It's difficult to overstate the benefits to Americans that flowed from the well Anthony Lucas drilled into a salt dome near Beaumont, Texas, in January 1901. The first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pa., in 1859; Standard Oil was incorporated in Pittsburgh in 1868. But petroleum then was used mostly to make kerosene, which replaced whale oil in lamps. (It was John D. Rockefeller, not Greenpeace, who saved the whales.) Within days, Lucas' "gusher" was producing more oil than every other well in the United States combined. Previously, trains, ships and factories were powered by coal. Spindletop produced so much oil the price dropped to a few cents a barrel. Oil became cheaper than coal, and was cleaner and easier to transport. The Santa Fe Railroad had just one oil-driven locomotive in 1901. By 1905, it had 227. Factories too switched from coal to oil. Costs of production -- and the price of manufactured goods -- dropped. Urban air got cleaner. There were only about 8,000 automobiles in the United States in 1900. By 1914, there were 1.7 million -- thanks to Henry Ford's Model T and the gasoline that made the Model T practical. Spindletop made possible the mechanization of agriculture, which increased food production and dropped its price. Because the necessities of life cost less, we could spend more on what for ages past were luxuries only the rich could afford. Buoyed by cheap food and cheap energy, the middle class grew in size and affluence. It's shrinking now, as Americans get squeezed between stagnant wages and rising prices for food and gas. But in this dark hour comes an energy development that can revive our economy, restore upward mobility to the middle class and reduce the threat of Islamist terror. This Spindletop-on-steroids is natural gas trapped in "black" shale, made accessible by hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The Marcellus Shale formation alone may contain 84 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, the U.S. Geological Survey said in August. That's up from the 2 tcf the survey had estimated in 2002. Before fracking, burning natural gas to generate electricity was like feeding filet mignon to your dog. Now, it's the most economical way. The "levelized cost" of generating a megawatt hour from a new plant is $63 for natural gas, $95 for coal, $97 for wind, $114 for nuclear and $211 for solar, according to the Energy Information Administration. As a motor vehicle fuel, compressed natural gas costs about a third less than gasoline. Vehicles powered by natural gas reduce pollutants 60 to 90 percent. They're safer, too, because if there's an accident, there's little likelihood of fire or explosion. Marcellus Shale added 44,000 jobs in Pennsylvania and 13,000 jobs in West Virginia in 2009, according to researchers at Penn State. Ohio could add more than 200,000 jobs in just four years, an industry group there estimated in September. Nationally, the direct and indirect gains in jobs are measured in millions. We could be energy independent in less than a decade. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia stand to lose their geopolitical clout. Nothing in this life is all gain and no pain, but shale gas comes as close as anything ever has. So why are many Democrats trying to strangle Spindletop II in its crib? The EIA's figures make it clear why "renewable" energy firms like Solyndra go bust despite massive subsidies. So President Barack Obama is trying to jack up the price of energy to make solar and wind seem less outrageously expensive. "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," Mr. Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008. A few politically connected people, such as Solyndra's George Kaiser, have made millions from "green" energy subsidies and mandates. They, in turn, give lots of money to Democrats. Shale gas undermines this backscratching. Abundant, safe, inexpensive and environmentally friendly, it destroys the arguments for wind and solar power. "Eventually civilization may well run out of natural gas and other fossil fuels that are recoverable at a reasonable cost and may be forced to switch permanently to other sources of energy," wrote Michael Lind in the liberal Webzine Salon. "These are more likely to be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion than solar or wind power, which will be as weak, diffuse and intermittent a thousand years from now as they are today."
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2011, Jack Kelly |
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