It is truly amazing the amount of oil and natural gas available to us in this country. Someday the corruption that exists in Washington will be gone and we will able to declare our energy independence!
Energy Policy: New York’s governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York’s and America’s energy economy?
Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada.
The Marcellus Shale stretches from southwestern New York to Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. A nearby formation of Devonian shale is even more porous, with a superior amount of trapped gas per volume of rock.
Geologist Gary Lash of State University New York at Fredonia and colleague Terry Engelder of Penn State estimate that Marcellus holds 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. About 20 trillion cubic feet are produced in the U.S. annually.
Lash notes that successful wells have already been drilled in Pennsylvania — one near Pittsburgh and the other in Susquehanna County. A Penn State report that was requested by state legislators predicted that Marcellus could add $14 billion to the state’s economy in 2010, create more than 98,000 jobs and generate $800 million in state and local tax revenues. Now that’s what you call a stimulus package.
