Marcellus shale has lots of gas

IBD:

Despite efforts in the media and Congress to shut it down through fear and falsehoods, a new estimate of America's most promising energy source portends even more gas, oil — and jobs.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced Tuesday that the Marcellus Shale formation that straddles the northeastern United States may hold a staggering 84 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable natural gas, up significantly from the last official government estimate of 2 tcf made in 2002.

The USGS said the estimate came from new information about the gas-rich formation underlying New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and from technical improvements in how wells are drilled and the gas is extracted.

Those who argue that the world is running out of fossil energy are wrong once again. They ignore the fact our resources are limited only by our imagination and the will to develop them.

The 84 trillion tcf figure is the mean of a range of possible gas volumes. There's a 95% chance that the formation has 43 tcf of gas and a 5% chance it may hold as much as 144 tcf. In addition, the formation may hold anywhere from 1.5 billion to 6.1 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.

This news strikes terror in the hearts of environmentalists, and government ideologues simply cannot handle shale gas and the prospect of what it holds for the American future. Shale gas doesn't require a government subsidy like wind and solar energy do; it is profitable, abundant and versatile in that it can be used to power the grid and as a transportation fuel.

Unable to attack natural gas itself, the cleanest burning of the fossil fuels, greenies and their sycophants in the media and government have attacked the safety of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the method used to extract the oil and gas trapped in the prehistoric porous rock. It poses dangers to the water supply, they insist.

...

To borrow a phrase from Chuck Schumer, this cheap natural gas is a dagger to the heart of those who hoped to drive up the cost of carbon based fuels to make alternative energy look more competitive. This formation is just one within the US. The Western US contains even more oil and gas in shale formations. There is reason to believe there is enough to make the US energy independent. This would crate hundreds of thousands of jobs and produce trillions of dollars in revenue to the government.