PrestonSturges wrote:Someone I met in PA described fracking as a "scam" and that the gas companies are merely looking for areas with lots of working wells, setting up a fracking operation, and draining off the gas that would have been produced by the comventional wells.
Pops wrote:Updated through 2005 is here.
AS horizontal drilling and the controversial extraction technique known as fracking have made domestically produced natural gas more available and sharply cheaper, that gas has been widely embraced by industry, electric utilities and trucking fleets.
The rapid development of shale gas technology has helped reduce energy imports and, in some cases, encouraged companies producing petrochemicals, steel, fertilizers and other products to return to the United States after relocating overseas. Natural gas exports are growing and terminals built to hold imported supplies are being repurposed for international sales.
The American petrochemical industry, for example, uses natural gas as both its primary raw material, in the form of liquid ethane, and as an energy fuel. And cheaper prices have led to a major expansion of capacity in the United States.
The hydrocarbon molecules in natural gas are split apart and then recombined as building blocks for many products, including bulk chemicals and fertilizers. The chemical ethylene, which is largely derived from natural gas, is used to make things like pool liners, building insulation and food packaging.
According to Kevin Swift, chief economist at the American Chemistry Council, European producers mostly use oil-derived raw materials for making these same products. “The U.S. has a competitive advantage when oil is seven times as expensive as natural gas, but now we have more like a 50-to-1 advantage,” he said. “The ‘shale gale’ is really driving this. A million B.T.U.’s of natural gas that might cost $11 in Europe and $14 in South Korea is $2.25 in the U.S. Partly because of that, chemical producers have plans to expand ethylene capacity in the U.S. by more than 25 percent between now and 2017.”
A 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimates that high rates of shale gas recovery could result in a million new manufacturing jobs by 2025. Robert McCutcheon, United States industrial products leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in a statement that the revived natural gas industry “has the potential to spark a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S., including billions in cost savings, a significant number of new jobs and a greater investment in U.S. plants.”
dsula wrote:So instead of using the gas to help the transition to a non-oil society, it is once again wasted on plastic and other BS. It really looks like humanity will get what it deserves.
KingM wrote:If the Sierra Club were at all serious about protecting the American environment, they would be advocates of immigration curbs in order to stabilize the American population at current levels.
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