The 1973 OPEC oil embargo revealed a serious weakness in America's energy and national security, one that has plagued this nation ever since. But fracking, horizontal drilling, and energy diversification that includes natural gas for long-haul trucking and electric vehicles for short-haul, light duty work have turned things around.
Environment America's Margie Alt has found a new "cause" to enrich her group's coffers: scaring the bejeesus out of Americans by claiming that fracking has a "damaging footprint." Alt's group, oddly enough, is at odds with kjey Obama Administation officials. And yet, this lemming-like movement is gaining ground!
Greens carp about fracking, partly because it uses some water (up to 6.0 gal/MMBtu of energy produced). Yet they champion ethanol, which uses up to 29,000 gal/MMBtu, and biodiesel (up to 74,000 gal/MMBtu). Is this mere Green hypocrisy, or Greenback Greed? It is well past time to end the mandates and the subsidies for ethanol and biodiesel.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, fracking requires just 0.6 to 5.8 gallons of water per million Btu of energy produced. By comparison, “renewable” and “sustainable” corn-based ethanol requires 2,510 to 29,100 gallons per million Btu of usable energy – and biodiesel from soybeans consumes an astounding and unsustainable 14,000 to 75,000 gallons of water per million Btu!
A recent study -- Powering California: The Monterey Shale & California’s Economic Future -- found that development of oil from the Monterey Shale using hydraulic fracturing and other recovery technologies could result in (a) the creation of 512,000 to 2.8 million new jobs; (b) personal income growth of $40.6 billion to $222.3 billion; (c) additional local and state government revenues from $4.5 billion to $24.6 billion, and (d) an increase in state GDP by 2.6% to 14.3% on a per-person basis.
. In addition to discovering that only slightly more than half had found full-time jobs, Roska and Arum found that student “lack of awareness of current events … was startling.” Thirty-two percent reported “that they read a newspaper only monthly or never.”
Drilling opponents claim to be protecting the environment. In reality, they simply detest hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty. Commonsense policies will rejuvenate our economy, put Americans back to work....
WATCH NOW. Fun new promo spot for FrackNation. Catch the premiere January 22 at 9PM on AXS.tv.
The new robber barons are not content with only taxes and debt. They are using other people's hard-earned money to finance wind, solar, biofuel and other schemes that reward crony capitalist campaign contributors.while locking up centuries of vital energy resources.