Posted on 06/21/2012 11:36:53 PM PDT by neverdem
It may not pique the public’s interest quite like finance or information technology, but it just could just save the U.S. economy.
Indeed, the natural gas industry supports some 2.8 million jobs — either directly through companies engaged in exploration and drilling or indirectly through manufacturers that use the fuel as a raw material, according to the American Gas Association.
The real potential for economic impact, however, lies in the vast reservoirs of shale gas that are newly accessible through hydraulic fracturing.
Better known as “fracking,” the process involves extracting natural gas from shale rock layers deep within the Earth using a highly pressurized mixture of water and chemicals.
“Energy is always a key player in the economy and because producers have been able to make these advances in technology and efficiency improvements, shale gas could be a very significant driver for the economy going forward,” says Rocco Canonica, director of energy analysis at Bentek Energy, an energy market research firm in Evergreen, Colo.
Over the last four years, fracking, along with traditional drilling, has unlocked a staggering 3,400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in North America, enough to supply U.S. consumers at current demand levels for more than 100 years, according to business and economic research firm IHS...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
We have much more than 100 years of oil in the U.S. So natgas is great in electrical generation and heating applications, but for motor vehicles petroleum is and always will be king.
Probably not.
The problems in the US economy are so large and so systemic, that there’s no single sector solution to the problem.
Nothing can save us until the government stops choking the life out of us.
Unfortunately every two years there is a chance that those chokers will take right back over.
And don’t forget the new oil found in NV and the huge Green River formation, with estimates of a trillion and more of recoverable reserves (more than Saudi Arabia)
It would help under a centrist to conservative Republican, it’ll do no good under a modern Democrat. No one thing will “save’ us from our decline. We need to shut down the public education system and switch to a homeschool/Internet/private/parochial system and redeploy the teachers and administrators to the private sector.
Green River info here: http://oilshalegas.com/greenriveroilshale.html
We are facing an entrenced idealogy (liberal education idealogy). Emapthy on the part of parents (send the kids to shcool {sic} so i have “MY” time) is a big part of the problem.
Vouchers.
No.
Agreed. No and nor should it.
A one commodity economy would suck.
That’s all well and fine.
It won’t reverse the US economic situation. Our problems are now very deep and systemic, and only some truly large, disruptive changes will turn this situation around.
[. . .only some truly large, disruptive changes will turn this situation around.]
Something on the scale of the disintegration of the Soviet Union?
I’m not sure I quite see your case there.
What I’m talking about are changes that need to be made that would be seen as heresy by the political class in DC:
- restricting immigration, both illegal and legal
- ending “too big to fail” in the banking system and declaring some forms of financial derivatives to be null and void
- ending the idiotic notion of “free trade” in a world of currency manipulation
and so on. These things won’t happen, much less be proposed, and as a result we’re on a glidepath forward and down.
I was thinking of cultural and economic upheaval's that change part of the world and ultimately benefit the U.S. From 1938 to 1942 a wave of financial assets moved from Europe into U.S. banks, markets and industries ahead of the Blitzkrieg. The economy was strengthened in spite of FDR's counter intuitive policies.
Don't look now, but the changeover has already started. The big fleets are swapping from diesel to natgas as fast as tney can, and spending big bucks to do so. This will drive the broad installation of refill infrastructure and enable the passenger car fleet to also switch.
Don't look now, but the changeover has already started. The big fleets are swapping from diesel to natgas as fast as tney can, and spending big bucks to do so. This will drive the broad installation of refill infrastructure and enable the passenger car fleet to also switch."We have much more than 100 years of oil in the U.S. So natgas is great in electrical generation and heating applications, but for motor vehicles petroleum is and always will be king."
. . . but are the big fleets you refer to long-haul trucks which can use LNG, or they short-haul, intermittent service vehicles for which CNG is the only practical NG option? Because of the size/weight of the tankage required, CNG is IMHO more more like battery power than gasoline-fueled power. Even LNG requires more volume of tankage than the energy-equivalent quantity of gasoline . . .I’m all for NG fuel, for fleet use where economy of scale can minimize the inconveniences involved. But for the personal car, IMHO it doesn’t really work. The fuel cost savings just won’t justify the inconvenience.
With a home refueling compressor, I don't see a lot of inconvenience.
That's likely to be true but freeing up the energy sector to drill on Federal lands could be the trigger that gets the machine starting up again.
If Romney acts quickly and decisively and has the backing of Congress that would be a big confidence booster for the business and investment communities and there is no doubt that jobs would be created in large numbers and rather quickly.
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