Wind turbines will supply 17pc of UK electricity by 2020, equal to all other
off-shore wind projects in the world combined
Posted on 10/29/2012 12:21:12 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
The wonders of US shale gas continue to amaze. We receive fresh evidence by the day that swathes of American industry have acquired a massive and lasting advantage in energy costs over global rivals, demolishing assumptions about US economic decline.
Wind turbines will supply 17pc of UK electricity by 2020, equal to all other
off-shore wind projects in the world combined
Royal Dutch Shell is planning an ethane plant in the once-decaying steel valley of Beaver County, near Pittsburg. Dow Chemical is shutting operations in Belgium, Holland, Spain, the UK, and Japan, but pouring money into a propylene venture in Texas where natural gas prices are a fraction of world levels, likely to remain so for the life-cycle of Dow's investments.
Some fifty new projects have been unveiled in the US petrochemical industry. A $30bn investment blitz in underway in ethelyne and fetilizer plants alone.
A study by the American Chemistry Council said the shale gas bonanza has reversed the fortunes of the chemical, plastics, aluminium, iron and steel, rubber, coated metals, and glass industries. "This was virtually unthinkable five years ago," said the body’s president, Cal Dooley.
This is happening just as other clusters of manufacturing - machinery, electrical products, transport equipment, furniture, etc - are "re-shoring" back from from China to the US. A 16pc annual rise in Chinese wages over the last decade has changed the game. PricewaterhouseCoopers calls it the "Homecoming".
The revival of the chemical industry is a spin-off from the greater drama of America’s energy rebound, though a very big one. As many readers will have seen, US energy department said last week that the country will produce 11.4m barrels a day (b/d) of oil, biofuels, and liquid hydrocarbons next year, almost as much as Saudi Arabia
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Being a shale oil producer means an end to boom and bust economy cycles.
Every one will be very happy. Conservatives won't need to fret over cutting spending and raising taxes and liberals won't have to worry about pension liabilities or rolling back the welfare state.
With an expanding economic pie, America could be a less polarized country and Americans could live very happily together for a long time.
Maybe America can say a a la hasta vista to its Chinese financiers in the future.
Obama has plans, if elected, to put the clamps down on shale fracking. Lets hope that if Romney gets elected these same new EPA laws don’t get pushed through in some bill.
This is by far one of the most exciting stories I have read about our country in a long time.
Why can’t the worthless American media do stories like this?
Now I understand Romney’s energy plan more comprehensively.
He knows what he is doing and Obama is an idiot.
We need to get Obama out so our country can be on top once again in energy development and be off the Muslim oil teat.
This is the important part of the article:
America produced 81pc of its total energy needs in the first six months of this year, the highest since 1991. Citigroup thinks US ouput of crude and eqivalents will top 15.6m b/d by 2020, adding up to 3.6m jobs through multiplier effects. North America as a whole will reach 27m b/d - with Canada’s oil sands and Mexico’s deepwater fields - making the region a “new Middle East”.
The implications are momentous. America will no longer need a single drop of oil from the Islamic world. The strategic burden will fall on Europe, which is meekly disarming itself to meet Wolfgang Schauble’s austerity targets. Russia and China will be pleased to help.
The Middle East will then become Europe and China’s problem, not ours. Add that to the industrial renaissance (the name of the game is cheap energy, cheap resources and having them in close proximity) that should come about as well, and you can see why the Middle East and liberals are so desperate to support someone like Obama.
Without Obama or the course prescribe by the left in this country, and with everyone else committing industrial suicide in the name of the Green Religion or Islam (take your pick), the US *could* conceivably become a dominant industrial power the likes of which have never yet been seen because we’d be rocketing forward while the rest of the world is scuttling their industry.
Off topic: In four years, I still haven't come up with or heard or read a term that adequately conveys my bottom of my soul disdain, contempt and desire to see all the worst that can happen to a human being befall this destructive monster. I want to watch him sobbing in eternal torment, and asking forgiveness on his knees on his very own 24 hour cable channel. Really, tho, it's not racial.
Just because you are raking in revenue now is no reason to spend like a drunken sailor.
Sure we have infrastructure projects going great guns in the oil producing areas of the State (to the envy of regions which already have 4-lane highways or interstates and a fraction of the truck traffic), and those investments needed to happen anyway and have been on the drawing board for decades, where they languished until the last few years.
That is an investment, and (actually) the cost of doing business.
Indirectly, the oil companies are paying via production taxes and through the pass-through costs of truck licensing and haulage permits, all of which end up factored into the cost of drilling a well eventually.
As populations increase in the region, demands on other infrastructure increase as well, and those needs must be met, or the increase in tax revenue will not be sustainable. One hand washes the other, in a good way.
Unfortunately, though, there are those agencies left on the sideline in all this who are seeking desperately to get a slice of the pie, to justify their presence, to expand even when not needed, and to grab a share of money that need not be spent.
The time to be ever vigilant is not so much when times are tight, but especially when there is plenty to go around. That is when aspects of government will grow far beyond their intended size and scope and liberty is especially threatened.
(8^D)
"Vengeance is mine saith the Lord."
I trust Him to reward all the traitors to this country as they so richly deserve, for only He can adequately do so.
Three points to consider.
The obvious one is this is being rolled out as a smoke screen to bolster Obama’s claim of being the “pro energy” cheerleader when the opposite is true.
“Biofuels?” Still pushing the ethanol and “diesel” green propaganda?
Last but not least, Obamas destabilizing in the middle east will ensure that the US consumers won't see any price reliefs because world markets will still gobble up supply and we still have the EPA and unfrocks making sure we don't have any increased refining capacity.
You don’t get it, Democrats don’t fret over pensions and the welfare state because they fear the loss of the “safety net”. Democrats use the pension liabilities as part of their organizing technique.
Save
I believe it was Calvin Coolidge who said, “The business of America is business”.
This story just makes me feel good and gives me hope for the future for my kids and grand kids.
Welcome back America.
Thanks bruinbirdman.
No, most boom and busts happen not as a result of market problems but because of government interference in the market. I see no sign that this will change.
>>>>”Being a shale oil producer means an end to boom and bust economy cycles.”
Absolutely untrue. We had boom-bust cycles when we were primarily an oil producer (even throughout the 19th century); we shall continue to have boom-bust cycles as a shale-oil and shale-gas producer (throughout the 21st century).
Boom-bust cycles are not caused by resources. They are the inevitable outcome of inflationary monetary policies primarily caused by the Federal Reserve’s expansion of fictitious money and credit. They are also caused, to some degree, by a practice of commercial banks (apart from any Federal Reserve policy) called “fractional reserve banking”, which also inflates the supply of money with a fictitious medium of exchange (economists call it “fiduciary media”). The “boom” is the period of inflation; the “bust” is the inevitable consequence of the boom, because — as it turns out — one of the unfortunate aspects of an inflationary boom is that it misleads investors into making erroneous judgments regarding the expected future profitability of large-scale ventures. Thus, the “bust” is that part of the cycle which exposes to everyone (the investor, the newly hired managers, the newly hired workers, etc.) the fact that the original investors misread the direction in which the market for their product or service was actually moving; and, additionally, is that part of the cycle that “unwinds” that original error . . . generally by means of liquidating as much of it as possible.
The “bust” is thus correctly compared to the hangover period after a “boom” period of being on a heavy binge.
So I think fracking is fantastic, and good for the economy in every way, BUT: so long as we have a Federal Reserve, and so long as commercial banks can lend out more than they have on reserve, there will always be some degree of inflation; and so long as there is some degree of “boom”, there will always be some degree of “bust.”
Because they contradict the liberal agenda. We must still prepare for the cataclysm of Global Climate Change, remember? That means "green energy", not energy dependent on hydrocarbons.
Besides which, fracking destroys the environment!
No self-respecting liberal in the media wants to report a story that speaks of strong economic growth fueled by energy independence due to shale gas and shale oil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5HkCR9sEeEg
Excellent interview by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution with Trevor Rees-Jones, CEO of Chief Oil & Gas, mainly discussing fracking.
It's worse than that for the Europeans. The Chinese recent threatening behavior towards their neighbors in the South China Sea is because they want to have the vast oil reserves in the are to themselves. The area is believed to have 4 or 5 times the oil of the Gulf of Mexico. China can do without the ME, Europe cannot. Furthermore, the Saudis may become a net importer of energy within 20 years. The Europeans better hope the winds increase to turn those windmills faster.
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