Fracking Saved U.S. Economy
The fracking revolution has been a major boon for the U.S. economy and the switch from coal to natural gas has dramatically reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Hydraulic fracking over the last decade has allowed American crude production to soar from less than 5 million barrels per day (bpd) to 9.2 million bpd . Natural gas production also jumped from 51 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in 2005 to 77.9 bcfd at the end of 2014. All of this has been accompanied by a 10 percent fall in greenhouse gas emissions.
IHS Research credited hydraulic fracking as the shovel ready jobs that lifted America out of the Great Recession by a direct and indirect 1.7 million increase in employment. The 70 percent crash in natural gas prices from $7.59 in 2006 to $2.83 mcf today allowed manufacturing to expand faster than the economy for the first time since the 1980s.
After crude peaked at $147 a barrel and gasoline prices touched $5 a gallon in 2008, crude oil is now about $50 per barrel and gas is $3 per gallon. Goldman Sachs estimates cheaper gas is the equivalent of a $125 billion tax cut for U.S. consumers.
Opponents of fracking howl that with natural gas now 80 percent cheaper than supposedly sustainable energy like wind or solar, America is exacerbating global warming. It is true that cheaper costs incentivized electrical utilities to convert from coal to natural gas, but that switch resulted in CO2 emissions from electrical generation plunging by 45 percent and in just the last decade.
Natural gas is now on track to overtake coal . In 2000, coal fueled 52 percent of electrical generation capacity in the U.S., versus only 12 percent for natural gas. But today natural gas now accounts for 30 percent of electrical generation, versus 37 percent for coal. Due to fracking encouraging the switch to clean gas, Americas total greenhouse gas emissions fell by 3.4% from 2011 to 2012 and 10% since 2005 .
There is substantial research disputing global warming risks from methane and methanes only lasts inthe atmosphere a quarter to one sixteenth as long as carbon dioxide. But even if the risks were real, the EPA under Obama recently admitted that due to greater efficiency, methane emissions from hydraulically fractured natural gas wells decreased by 73 percent from 2011 to 2013 and are expected to continue falling.
In just seven years, hydraulic fracking from U.S. shale has broken the back of the OPECs $100 a barrel cartel pricing. There is also so much natural gas production in the U.S. that America is about to start competing with OPEC as a major exporter by converting surplus natural gas into a liquid form called LNG.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/03/fracking_saved_us_economy_.html#ixzz3UWyswv00
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It is ironic that every energy source Obama opposes is continuing to grow and expand on private and state lands and private investment in them is way up while every type of energy Obama shilled for and subsidized with tax dollars is decreasing and receiving virtually no private investment dollars.
Oh and even though we never signed the Kyoto accords for very good reason then, we have now met them and we did it without sacrificing our economy or our lifestyle.
XXJefferson, you've got to stop bumping your articles up with a single comment to keep them on the front page. Right now, as of 8:23 am on 3/16/2015, you have 8 active articles going, which is nearly 1/2 of the board. If an article doesn't get responses, it is customary to bump it up once. Dowser