An article in The Baltimore Sun this week calls attention to the fact that some energy analysts have already labeled the 21st century “the natural gas century,” and in all likelihood natural-gas prices will stay near present low levels for years to come and possibly even decades into the future.
Hopes for a new way of extracting natural gas have been bright for more than two years, after claim-staking “landmen” stormed Appalachia from New York to Tennessee. Now interest from Exxon Mobil and other corporate giants has prompted some smart people to start portraying “shale gas” as a very big deal that shatters assumptions about energy prices, America’s power supply, and the future of transportation.
The newspaper quotes energy analyst Stephen Schork, who says that shale gas is the real deal. “Ten years ago, nobody thought shale gas was possible. In less than 10 years, we went from ‘North America is running out of natural gas’ to ‘North America has enough natural gas to last’ – I don’t know, what are they saying? – ‘100 years, 150 years, 200 years,'” says Schork.
The article also points that natural gas is cheap for the planet as well:
Taking much more of the electricity-generation burden from filthy coal, a realistic goal if natural-gas prices stay low, would be an even bigger environmental coup.
So shale gas can cut coal’s mercury and sulfur pollution, reduce growth in greenhouse gases, increase U.S. energy security, and deliver cheap power to Americans struggling with a bad recession. Maybe it really is a big deal.
One final eye-opening figure presented by the Sun’s Jay Hancock is that current estimates of U.S. natural-gas deposits could yield the energy equivalent of 110 billion barrels of oil, a figure that is not only 10 times the estimates of reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but more than the total estimate of Atlantic shelf gas.
Read the entire article HERE.