Shale gas savings could exceed $100 billion

Businessweek:

 Natural gas prices that slumped to a 10-year low this month could save U.S. consumers $16.5 billion on home energy bills over the course of a year, according to a senior economist at the U.S. Federal Reserve.

U.S. households might see total savings from lower gas prices of as much as $113 billion a year through 2015, including tack-on effects such as lower product prices and higher wages generated by cheaper fuel, according to energy industry consultants IHS Inc.

The projected savings is “an unbelievable amount of money,” said Greg Ebel, chief executive of Spectra Energy Corp., during a Jan. 17 interview. “That’s better than any tax cut you’ve seen out there, better than any government handout.”

If consumers end up pocketing more than $100 billion due to low gas prices, it could add a “significant” piece to U.S. gross domestic product growth for 2012 or 2013, said Robert Solow, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who won the 1987 Nobel Prize in economics. “If that figure is right, it’s a substantial amount,” Solow said in a telephone interview yesterday.

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There is more.

We are just starting to realize the benefits of the shale gas revolution that has produced thousands of jobs and will now produce billions in savings for consumers.  We should also eventually get savings from oil production if the administration will get out of the way.  Increased production there should eventually reduce the world price, and even if it does not the reduced transportation cost will be a savings.

This savings has to be disconcerting to liberals who were counting on increased prices to make less efficient alternative energy look competitive.