The Blind Leading The Blind: Obama Administration's Energy (and economic) Policy

Why is the truth about energy so difficult to obtain?  It is fairly simple, as the following article makes abundantly clear.  "Green Energy" such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuel is not working.  It can not and will not work, even when subsidized with BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, given above or below the table.  (Fallout from Solyndra Bankruptcy Continues, Stirling Files for ... 
SustainableBusiness.com - 781 related articles)

Yet hydraulic fracturing, (fracking) is proven to greatly increase the productivity of oil and gas-bearing rocks and has been quietly and safely used for decades.  Tens of thousands of jobs are being created and Billions of dollars of revenue is being collected by local, state, and Federal governments.  Natural gas for heating, cooling, transportation, and manufacturing is cheap and abundant.   America is becoming less dependent on "foreign oil".  These are all obvious positive truths. 

So why is fracking suddenly and viciously being attacked by the Obama Administration and their obedient propaganda tools known as the "mainstream media" (NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc.)?  Why is the Obama Administration not telling, promoting, and following these simple truths about energy?  Surely they are not simply THAT naive, inexperienced, and ignorant.  Does Obama owe that much to his fanatical "environmental" supporters that he is willing to watch the American economy collapse?  Will the truth be told that Obama's policies are hurting people and having exactly the opposite effect of what he promised would happen if elected?

So what is going on here?  What is really going on and why?  That's anther story and question.  Any ideas?
Peter


What the Frack is Going on Here?


By Paul Driessen

10/1/2011 http://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2011/10/01/what_the_frack_is_going_on_here/page/full/

Hydraulic fracturing sends “huge volumes of toxic fluids” deep underground at high pressure, to fracture shale rock and release natural gas, Food & Water Watch claims. “Billions of gallons of toxic fluids” will “contaminate” groundwater and drinking water “for generations.” We need to “Ban Fracking Now.”

Environmentalists used to support “clean natural gas.” Whence the intolerant new attitude?

Oil companies have been using hydraulic fracturing for 60 years to get the most petroleum possible from grudging rock formations deep beneath the Earth. A few years ago, Mitchell Energy and others combined HF with horizontal drilling to tap into hydrocarbon-rich shale deposits that previously refused to surrender their energy riches. Countless fracking operations later, the results have been spectacular.

Tapping the Marcellus, Bakken, Barnett, Haynesville and other formations has created jobs, generated revenues and rejuvenated moribund industries in many states that have shale deposits or manufacture the fluids, pipes and other equipment used in these operations. US natural gas production and estimated reserves have soared, and wellhead prices have dropped from $11 per thousand cubic feet in 2008 to $4 today. Canada is actively drilling, while Poland and Britain are evaluating early exploration results.

The Fort Worth (Texas) Chamber says fracking supports 110,000 direct and secondary jobs in the region and added billions in property and sales tax revenues. Loren C. Scott & Associates calculates that shale drilling has added $11 billion to Louisiana’s economy. Pennsylvania’s Labor and Industry Department reports that HF has already generated 72,000 jobs and $1.4 billion in state tax revenues, and could bring another $20 billion by 2020. West Virginia and North Dakota report similar success.


Soaring supplies and plummeting prices have persuaded Dow, Shell, Sasol, Ormet and other companies to open, reopen or expand plants to produce ethylene, petrochemicals, aluminum – and more jobs.

That’s excellent energy and economic news, at a time when we sure could use a little good news.

Certainly, with all this activity going on – much of it in states that haven’t seen much drilling in decades, if ever – there is a clear need for regulations and oversight. We need to ensure that drilling and fracking are done properly, and chemicals are handled, disposed of and recycled correctly, to prevent harm to human health, wildlife habitats and environmental quality. While most shale gas deposits are thousands of feet below groundwater aquifers and drinking water supplies, we need to ensure that well casings are properly installed and cemented, so that there is no danger of contamination.

But to ban hydraulic fracturing – and abandon these revenues and jobs? What the frack is going on here?

Think about it. This is free enterprise in action. It pays its own way. It doesn’t need subsidies, mandates, tariffs, or bureaucrats and politicians deciding which companies and industries win or lose. HF generates real, sustainable jobs, plus significant tax and royalty revenue, right here in America. It provides energy that works 24/7/365 … and is far cheaper than land-hungry wind turbine and solar panel installations. In fact, the shale gas revolution is making it even harder to justify these “renewable energy alternatives.”

Natural gas, specifically shale gas, is essential for powering backup generators for unreliable wind and solar installations. However, low gas prices make wind and solar even less competitive. The better solution is just to go with gas, coal and nuclear for electricity generation, and forget about expensive, eco-unfriendly, subsidy-dependent, crony capitalist wind and solar.

HF also demolishes the “peak oil and gas” mantra that we are rapidly running out of hydrocarbon energy, which further demonstrates that geologist Wallace Pratt was right when he said “Oil is first found in the minds of men.” Once companies devised new ways to extract shale gas bounties, vast new reserves became available.

Today, in reality, the only reason we might run out of energy is that government won’t let us drill.

People want and need reliable, affordable power. Many environmentalists support Paul Ehrlich’s opposite sentiment, that “giving society cheap energy is like giving an idiot child a machine gun.”

No wonder unrepentant fossil fuel haters are going ballistic over fracking.

The rest of us just want honest answers, carefully conducted drilling, fracking and production operations – and the benefits that come with them. Thankfully, the facts are relatively easy to find.

The Wall Street Journal laid many out clearly and forcefully in a June 2011 editorial, “The facts about fracking: The real risks of the shale gas revolution and how to manage them.” Whether it’s cancer, drinking water contamination, toxic or radioactive chemicals, earthquakes or regulations – the truth is miles from the misrepresentations, hysteria and fear-mongering propagated by Food & Water Watch and similar groups.

People who want to know how hydraulic fracturing is actually done – and what chemicals are actually used, even in specific states – can find a wealth of information at well-designed industry websites provided by Chesapeake Energy, the Ground Water Protection Council and Halliburton.

As the Halliburton site notes, 99.5% of fracking fluids is water and sand (the sand is carried into fractures, to keep them open and release the gas). However, forcing that fluid mix down wellbores and into solid rock formations thousands of feet underground requires advanced engineering and special chemicals to:

* Keep the sand suspended in the liquid, so that it is carried deep into the fractures;

* Fight the growth of bacteria in the fluid and wellbore, so that gas flows and pipes don’t corrode; and

* Reduce the surface tension of water that comes in contact with the reservoir, to improve gas production.

Different subsurface rock formations and conditions require different formulations for the 0.5% of the HF fluids that involves special chemicals. In the past, diesel oil and various industrial chemicals were used. Today, to an ever-increasing degree, the chemicals are borrowed from the food and cosmetics industry. The technical names sound daunting or even scary (inorganic acids, polysaccharide polymers and sulfonated alcohol, for instance), but these CleanStream chemicals (Halliburton’s terminology) are found in cheese and beer, canned fish and dairy desserts, and marshmallows and shampoo, respectively.

Even these three chemical groups (and other food and cosmetic chemicals) are classified as “hazardous” by the EPA and FDA, because in high doses some can cause cancer and other problems in animals. So you could say Food & Water Watch is technically correct when it tries to scare people by saying fracking fluids contain “toxic chemicals.” But the same point would apply to alcoholic beverages, fruit juices, lip liners, food starch, hand soap and countless other everyday products. Should we ban them too, along with coffee, broccoli and other foods that naturally contain even more potent carcinogens?

In other advanced techniques, instead of chemical biocides to kill bacteria, some systems now employ ultraviolet light, and mobile units now allow crews to treat and reuse water, reducing the amount of freshwater required in fracking. Other improvements are being made on a regular basis, as explained in simple lay terms on websites like those mentioned above. You can even find psychedelic 3-D maps of hydraulic fracturing operations and explanations of other fascinating technologies.

New York and other states, the Delaware River Basin Commission, Canadian provinces, Britain, Poland, the European Commission, and many Asian and Latin American countries are pondering HF as part of the solution to their energy, unemployment, economic and revenue problems. Getting the facts is essential.

Shale gas is an energy policy game-changer. The last thing we need is more laws, regulations and policies based on misrepresentations and fabrications from outfits like Food & Water Watch.


Paul Driessen

Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.

American Science, Technology, and Business At Its Best

Someone tell the Democrats supporting the Obama Administration that the solution to our nation's economic and social problems is within our control.  We have the natural gas and oil resources within our borders to cleanly power our industry, create millions of high-paying jobs and generate the revenue needed to work our way out of debt.  Oh, and don't forget that the entire concept of man-caused global warming is being proven to be a hoax and a fraud, perpetuated by power-hungry losers like Al Gore.  See here: http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/

Forget the economic failures that are solar and wind power.  Oil and gas is here to stay, for the foreseeable future.  Horizontal drilling and the proven safe process of hydraulic fracturing these abundant oil and gas producing rocks such as the Marcellus, Bakken, Barnett, Woodford, and Eagle Ford Shales can transform (and save) America.  Pass the word around.  Let's get back on the road to real progress, not the phoney baloney that's been coming out of Washington the last few years.

Let's trust our real scientists and engineers, let real science prevail and take the power away from destructive purely political entities like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United Nations (UN).  See here: http://thefellowshipofscientifictruth.blogspot.com/
American can survive the mess we're in.
Peter

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


August 23, 2011

Contact: Travis Windle, 724-312-2230, travis.windle@fd.com

Patrick Creighton, 412-808-1112, patrick.creighton@fd.com



New Federal Data Highlights Staggering Amount of Clean-Burning American Natural Gas from the Marcellus Shale



USGS: 4,100% increase in technically recoverable Marcellus natural gas from 2002





Canonsburg, Pa. – Today, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) – an independent research arm of the Interior Department – released an updated assessment of undiscovered, technically recoverable American natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation, considered to be second largest natural field in the entire world. According to USGS, “the Marcellus Shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids.” USGS notes that “these gas estimates are significantly more than” its previous 2002 Marcellus assessment, “which estimated a mean of about 2 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF) and 0.01 billion barrels of natural gas liquids” – representing a 4,100% and 33,900% increase, respectively.



Kathryn Z. Klaber, president and executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, issued this statement upon reviewing the new USGS assessment:



“These new figures are further affirmation that the Marcellus Shale will continue to safely produce prolific amounts of clean-burning American natural gas for generations to come. While advent of shale gas development in the United States was only several years ago, its impact is proving to be profound and lasting.



“Gone are the days of America potentially relying on often-unstable regions and countries around the world to meet our growing natural gas demands. As this responsible development continues to expand across the Marcellus region, and the country, tens of thousands of Americans are finding work in an industry that is fundamentally strengthening our nation’s core.



“While some critics continue to question the viability of responsible domestic shale gas development, it is abundantly clear – as laid out by this new data – that the Marcellus Shale will continue to lead the way in meeting American’s energy needs for years to come.”



NOTE: Click HERE to view USGS’s updated assessment online. The USGS report follows a recent economic impact analysis conducted by researchers at Penn State University, which found that the Marcellus Shale formation could become the leading supplier of natural gas in the United States within a decade.

Save New York....and America: Allow "Fracking" and Oil an Gas Production

Are Americans going to allow a few ideological environmentalists with dubious motives further damage our economy, put us deeper in debt, cause more job losses, and prolong the recession?  Isn't America's real problem with our spend and (over) regulate politicians in Washington, DC?

It is the height of folly to forgo developing our own oil and gas resources while sending our money and jobs to foreign producers.  What can the average person do about rising energy and commodity prices?  First vote the current naive, anti-growth politicians out of office, in your hometown, your state and in Washington.  Replace them with optimistic people with can-do attitudes.  America can fight its way out of this economic morass we are in, or we can lie down and die.  I choose to fight.  I owe at least that much to my forefather(s).

The follow editorial summarizes the issue quite well.  Support Rep. Thomas Reed New York.
Peter

Published on Washington Examiner (http://washingtonexaminer.com)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By The Examiner and by
Rep. Thomas Reed, a Republican who represents New York's 29th Congressional District.


Created Apr 14 2011 - 8:05pm

New York - and America - can profit from 'fracking' Marcellus Shale

It's no secret that we live in challenging times. Many sectors of our economy continue to struggle and our dependence on foreign energy sources continues to grow. However, there is some good news. Responsible development of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field has tremendous potential to help meet both of these challenges, and many, many more.

In 2009, the production of Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania had an economic output of more than $3.8 billion, and generated more than $400 million in state and local tax revenues, while creating 48,000 new jobs. There is no reason to believe that we wouldn't see a similar positive effect in New York.



We need this economic development. The 2010 census numbers released recently were, unfortunately, no surprise. Western New York and the southern tier of New York experienced concentrated levels of population decline.


I don't believe this is because people don't want to live here, but because they cannot find substantial employment to support their families. It's quite simple: People go where the jobs are.


Penn State recently determined that counties in Pennsylvania where Marcellus development has taken place saw, on average, an 11 percent growth in sales tax revenue. Our local governments could derive much needed revenue from Marcellus Shale production.


Some fear hydraulic fracturing. The Finger Lakes region is my home. We all agree that we need to keep our natural resources safe and free from pollutants. The reality is that hydraulic fracturing has been used for more than 60 years on more than one million wells nationwide.


New York has a long association with gas production. For decades, producers developed natural gas resources from rock strata residing thousands of feet below the Marcellus, tapping formations such as the Trenton Black River and the Medina.


Nevertheless, concerns regarding groundwater contamination exist. Geologists tell us that our groundwater aquifer is thousands of feet above the shale containing natural gas and is separated by thousands of feet of impermeable rock.


This virtually eliminates any potential risk of groundwater contamination from the process of hydraulic fracturing. Further, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is no shrinking violet.


The DEC has a long, effective record of monitoring the energy industry. It will ensure that exploration and extraction is done safely.


The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection just completed a study that found no radiation problem with drinking water in any of the seven rivers tested.  Any risk from industry wastewater is further mitigated by the fact that more fracturing fluid is being recycled and never goes to water treatment plants. Pennsylvania natural gas producers are recycling as much as 90 percent of their wastewater, an amount predicted to increase.



The same holds true in New York. Tens of thousands of natural gas wells have been produced in our state and the regulators charged with managing and overseeing their activities have proven that development can be done safely while protecting our environment.


In fact, the DEC recently noted there was "no record of any documented instance of groundwater contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing for gas well development in New York, despite the use of this technology in thousands of wells across the state during the past 50 or more years."


Other studies, including a 2004 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study, have concluded that hydraulic fracturing poses no significant environmental risk to drinking water supplies. There is no reason to expect anything different in developing the Marcellus Shale in New York.



The time has come to take appropriate precautions and move forward. Development of domestic energy resources today will lower our dependence on foreign energy tomorrow. We need to realize the potential that Marcellus Shale holds for improving our struggling economy and reducing our reliance on foreign energy.


Rep. Thomas Reed is a Republican who represents New York's 29th Congressional District.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source URL: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/04/new-york-and-america-can-profit-fracking-marcellus-shale

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Peak Oil? Not Quite Yet...........

Let this be a warning to never underestimate American Ingenuity, free enterprise, capitalism, or the human spirit and will to survive.  All of these themes can be recognized in the following story about the resurgence that is quietly taking place in the oil and gas industry in the United States and soon around the world.

There are not many people who recognize what is happening, least of all the current administration in Washington, D.C.  The utilization of the relatively new technologies of horizontal drilling, combined wth multi-stage hydraulic fracturing has created huge new reserves of first natural gas and now oil in the United States and around the world.

The groundwork is being laid for far greater energy independence for the United States, the creation of many thousands of jobs, huge increases of taxable revenue and even the bonus effect of clean air by substituting the burning of natural gas for coal to generate electricity.  Almost unbelievably these benefits are being overlooked by the government in Washington which is working to restrict the oil and gas industry and provide "incentives" or tax dollars to support the uneconomic "alternative" energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal.  This really makes one question the motives and/or the intelligence and competence of those running the show in Washington.

I've been away from this blog for a long time, but the information found here and easily accessible through the Google search feature provide a great deal of background on this subject.  I can provide much more information on request or demand.  There truly is a quiet energy boom taking place.  Read on and leave comments please.
Peter


New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US

 raising US output for first time in 2 decades

SOURCE: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/New-drilling-method-opens-apf-2851595693.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=

A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.



Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day -- more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.



This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers.



"That's a significant contribution to energy security," says Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Credit Suisse.



Oil engineers are applying what critics say is an environmentally questionable method developed in recent years to tap natural gas trapped in underground shale. They drill down and horizontally into the rock, then pump water, sand and chemicals into the hole to crack the shale and allow gas to flow up.



Because oil molecules are sticky and larger than gas molecules, engineers thought the process wouldn't work to squeeze oil out fast enough to make it economical. But drillers learned how to increase the number of cracks in the rock and use different chemicals to free up oil at low cost. "We've completely transformed the natural gas industry, and I wouldn't be surprised if we transform the oil business in the next few years too," says Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy, which is using the technique.



Petroleum engineers first used the method in 2007 to unlock oil from a 25,000-square-mile formation under North Dakota and Montana known as the Bakken. Production there rose 50 percent in just the past year, to 458,000 barrels a day, according to Bentek Energy, an energy analysis firm.



It was first thought that the Bakken was unique. Then drillers tapped oil in a shale formation under South Texas called the Eagle Ford. Drilling permits in the region grew 11-fold last year.



Now newer fields are showing promise, including the Niobrara, which stretches under Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas; the Leonard, in New Mexico and Texas; and the Monterey, in California.



"It's only been fleshed out over the last 12 months just how consequential this can be," says Mark Papa, chief executive of EOG Resources, the company that first used horizontal drilling to tap shale oil. "And there will be several additional plays that will come about in the next 12 to 18 months. We're not done yet."



Environmentalists fear that fluids or wastewater from the process, called hydraulic fracturing, could pollute drinking water supplies. The Environmental Protection Agency is now studying its safety in shale drilling. The agency studied use of the process in shallower drilling operations in 2004 and found that it was safe.



In the Bakken formation, production is rising so fast there is no space in pipelines to bring the oil to market. Instead, it is being transported to refineries by rail and truck. Drilling companies have had to erect camps to house workers.



Unemployment in North Dakota has fallen to the lowest level in the nation, 3.8 percent -- less than half the national rate of 9 percent. The influx of mostly male workers to the region has left local men lamenting a lack of women. Convenience stores are struggling to keep shelves stocked with food.



The Bakken and the Eagle Ford are each expected to ultimately produce 4 billion barrels of oil. That would make them the fifth- and sixth-biggest oil fields ever discovered in the United States. The top four are Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, Spraberry Trend in West Texas, the East Texas Oilfield and the Kuparuk Field in Alaska.



The fields are attracting billions of dollars of investment from foreign oil giants like Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Norway's Statoil, and also from the smaller U.S. drillers who developed the new techniques like Chesapeake, EOG Resources and Occidental Petroleum.



Last month China's state-owned oil company CNOOC agreed to pay Chesapeake $570 million for a one-third stake in a drilling project in the Niobrara. This followed a $1 billion deal in October between the two companies on a project in the Eagle Ford.



With oil prices high and natural-gas prices low, profit margins from producing oil from shale are much higher than for gas. Also, drilling for shale oil is not dependent on high oil prices. Papa says this oil is cheaper to tap than the oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico or in Canada's oil sands.



The country's shale oil resources aren't nearly as big as the country's shale gas resources. Drillers have unlocked decades' worth of natural gas, an abundance of supply that may keep prices low for years. U.S. shale oil on the other hand will only supply one to two percent of world consumption by 2015, not nearly enough to affect prices.



Still, a surge in production last year from the Bakken helped U.S. oil production grow for the second year in a row, after 23 years of decline. This during a year when drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the nation's biggest oil-producing region, was halted after the BP oil spill.



U.S. oil production climbed steadily through most of the last century and reached a peak of 9.6 million barrels per day in 1970. The decline since was slowed by new production in Alaska in the 1980s and in the Gulf of Mexico more recently. But by 2008, production had fallen to 5 million barrels per day.



Within five years, analysts and executives predict, the newly unlocked fields are expected to produce 1 million to 2 million barrels of oil per day, enough to boost U.S. production 20 percent to 40 percent. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates production will grow a more modest 500,000 barrels per day.



By 2020, oil imports could be slashed by as much as 60 percent, according to Credit Suisse's Morse, who is counting on Gulf oil production to rise and on U.S. gasoline demand to fall.



At today's oil prices of roughly $90 per barrel, slashing imports that much would save the U.S. $175 billion a year. Last year, when oil averaged $78 per barrel, the U.S. sent $260 billion overseas for crude, accounting for nearly half the country's $500 billion trade deficit.



"We have redefined how to look for oil and gas," says Rehan Rashid, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. "The implications are major for the nation."



Associated Press writer James MacPherson contributed reporting from Stanley, N.D.