3,2,1, we have liftoff.
Sort of looks like a rocket
launcher. Sort of is, metaphorically.
That image, friends and enemies, is a thing of beauty. It is
a new-fangled oil well in Elk County Pennsylvania. Hundreds like it are transforming the
American economy.
That oil well is tapping into Marcellus Shale, a geological
formation consisting of marine sedimentary rock that has long been known to
have natural gas trapped within it.
Looks oily, don’t it?
It is oily. And gassy:
That’s spring water so full of methane you can light it on
fire.
Marcellus Shale underlies almost all of West
Virginia , over half of Pennsylvania ,
half of Ohio , about one-half of Kentucky , one-third of New York ,
and parts of Virginia , Maryland, Tennessee and Alabama .
How much natural gas and shale oil is in the Marcellus?
Enough to have cut the price of natural gas by two-thirds since 2008. Enough
that OPEC, OPEC now, said this:
“Given recent
significant increases in North American shale oil and shale gas production, it
is now clear that these resources might play an increasingly important role in
non-OPEC medium- and long-term supply prospects.”
Enough that the International Energy Agency has said this:
“By around 2020,
[that’s 7+ years] the United States U.S. oil imports to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter [that means
we sell it] around 2030.”
Is that not a beautiful thing?
American know-how has done it again. What American
scientists and engineers have done is “hydraulic fracturing,” a technique of forcing
liquid into the formation to break the rock and release the oil and gas. “Fracking”
was first made economically practical in 1998 in Texas . Now it is leading to an energy revival
in Pennsylvania ,
where the first traditional oil derrick was built, and in other economically
depressed states in the region. Fracking will transform the American economy
and global ["whole world"] geo-politics.
