This years presidential race is already producing some miraculous changes. The latest example of this direction is the President’s new embrace of natural gas from shale.
On its latest report on jobs and further employment, the White House included a section on “America’s Natural Resource Boom.” The report concludes that a few years ago there were widespread, “fears of a looming natural gas shortage,” but that, “the discovery of new natural gas reserves, such as the Marcellus Shale, and the development of hydraulic fracturing techniques to extract natural gas from these reserves has led to rapidly growing domestic production and relatively low domestic prices for households and downstream industrial users.”
This is the first time the White House has favorably spoken of the natural gas reservoir below Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other Northeastern states.
The White House report goes on to state that, “Of the major fossil fuels, natural gas is the cleanest and least carbon‐intensive for electric power generation. By keeping domestic energy costs relatively low, this resource also supports energy intensive manufacturing in the United States. In fact, companies like Dow Chemical and Westlake Chemical have announced intentions to make major investments in new facilities over the next several years.”
The Wall Street Journal sarcastically jokes that they, “checked to see if someone slipped a press release from the Natural Gas Council into the White House report by mistake, but apparently not.”
Oddly, this new endorsements seems to contradict the previous energy policies pursued by the current administration. The Institute for Energy Research reports that royalties from oil and gas drilling have fallen more than 90% since 2008 because of Interior Department permitting delays and rejections.
It is evident that long-term energy security are a topic in this years election. Furthermore, its is evident to see what each candidate brings to the table with this expanded notion.
Did not know this and I’ve been keeping up with the debates. Something to think about.
Nice article. Nicely written. Keep it up.
CNN style reporting. Interesting spin on it and a great time to think about all of this.