Wall Street Journal Predicts Shale Gas Will Rock the World
Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a special section on energy, and the lead story, taking up the entire front page and continuing inside, is titled, “How Shale Gas is Going to Rock the World.” The article is written by Amy Myers Jaffe, a Fellow in Energy Studies at Rice University. Ms. Jaffe writes a stellar article that shows how shale gas, if not derailed by environmental extremists, will be THE energy story of the next several decades. MDN highly recommends you read this article (generally requires a subscription, but this special supplement is free and open for now—read it while you can).
Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the article to give you a taste:
We’ve always known the potential of shale; we just didn’t have the technology to get to it at a low enough cost. Now new techniques have driven down the price tag—and set the stage for shale gas to become what will be the game-changing resource of the decade.
I have been studying the energy markets for 30 years, and I am convinced that shale gas will revolutionize the industry—and change the world—in the coming decades. It will prevent the rise of any new cartels. It will alter geopolitics. And it will slow the transition to renewable energy.*
And no, slowing the adoption of renewable energy is not a negative—it’s a positive—because it will give renewable technologies time to develop without having to be heavily subsidized with our tax dollars and forced on us by a nanny state government. That is, natural gas is a bridge that will allow the free market (in renewable energy) to take its course naturally. Gotta love capitalism! Capitalism is superior to any other economic system in the world—and Ms. Jaffe shows us why.
*Wall Street Journal (May 10) – Shale Gas Will Rock the World
The unconventional high volume hydraulic fracturing drilling process used to extract natural gas in deep shale endangers our water resources and contaminates air. It leaves devastation in its wake. As investors, we must give the industry a wake up call. Proxy votes have been received by EXXON/MOBILE shareholders. Vote FOR proxy votes 3 through 13.
Thanks for leaving your opinion/comment D. MacInnes. I encourage people both for and against to leave comments. But I need to correct your misstatements. The technology is not “unconventional” — it’s been around for 60 years and countless thousands of wells have used it in the drilling process. It does not endanger water resources, and equally the process does not contaminate the air. I would recommend people vote against proxy votes 3 through 13, which is what I would do if I were a stockholder in ExxonMobil.
Thank you Jim for your kind and informative response to D. MacInnes’s concerns. As a former Regional Director and Newsletter Editor of the Sierra Club in Texas I eventually learned that it was not about making things work, it was about shutting things down and power. No source of power was without potential catastrophe and so should never be used. And besides we are just one more animal on this planet and dogs and deer don’t seem to need hydrocarbons or anything else.