An editorial in The Scranton Times Tribune titled “Let U.S. Gas Build U.S. Jobs” urged the members of Pennsylvania’s Congressional delegation, including Senators Bob Casey and Arlen Specter and Representatives Chris Carney and Paul Kanjorski, to support passage of the NAT GAS Act of 2009.
Amid a catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, a modest economic recovery with lackluster job creation, costly and dangerous dependence on foreign oil and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Congress might be expected to leap at a proposal that ensures progress across all of those issues. Yet it has not acted on the Natural Gas Act.
Pennsylvania is one of many states in the U.S. where new and substantial untapped reserves of shale gas have been identified. A large part of the gas-rich Marcellus Shale lies beneath the state. Tens of thousands of jobs have already been created as this cleaner burning domestic energy source is developed:
The United States imported 4.35 billion barrels of oil in 2009, about 65 percent of national consumption. As noted by T. Boone Pickens, an oil billionaire who favors conversion to other forms of energy, that translates into $500,000 a minute. In contrast, about 98 percent of all the natural gas consumed in the United States is produced here. Moreover, as demonstrated by the Marcellus Shale boom, the supply is abundant. Penn State geologists have estimated that the Marcellus Shale field alone contains more than 500 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, whereas current national consumption is about 20 trillion cubic feet per year.
The NAT GAS Act currently has 144 cosponsors in the House and 8 cosponsors in the Senate.
Read the entire editorial HERE.