In praise of shale gas
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Perhaps I am in the minority, but I am far more concerned about high unemployment and the predicament of our financially strapped state and local governments than I am about the possible pollution of underground water supplies from shale-gas drilling.
Production of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale has created thousands of jobs and much-needed income for people in sparsely populated areas of Pennsylvania, as well as substantial revenue for governments at all levels, to everyone's benefit.
Shale-gas production also has helped, not hampered, efforts to reduce pollution. By increasing the overall supply of natural gas, shale drilling is enabling electric utilities to replace some of the coal used in electricity generation. The switch to natural gas has made it easier to meet air-quality standards for pollutants like smog and mercury -- and has helped to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Yet opponents of shale-gas drilling insist that it's bad for the environment. I disagree.
The risk of polluting underground aquifers is vanishingly small. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection tightly regulates the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the technique that's made it possible in recent years to reach large deposits of shale gas, and hydraulic fracturing is done at a considerable distance from any underground water resources. Safeguards also are in place to protect water systems from discharging drilling wastes.
Shale gas accounted for 1 percent of the nation's gas supply in 2000. Today it supplies 20 percent, and by 2035, its share could grow to 50 percent. It's estimated that the natural-gas supply in the United States could last for 150 years at current rates of consumption, due largely to the vast shale-gas deposits that underlie Appalachia as well as parts of Texas, Louisiana, Illinois and other states.
First Published September 22, 2010 12:00 am
