Editorial: Natural Gas Drilling Increase Could Affect Worth County

We are being told by the Obama administration that natural gas is one of the pieces of the puzzle as far as energy is concerned. We are being told that there is an abundant 100 year supply of cheap natural gas just waiting to be drilled. But the problem with that is that even if what supporters say is true, that is not a viable long-term solution for our country. Pushing for natural gas would be a typically American solution -- kick the can down the road for 90 years like we did with slavery, or kick the can down the road with immigration like Ronald Reagan did when he was in office. But the problem with that is that 100 years down the road, we will be right back in the same boat that we started out in -- dependent on foreign oil, vulnerable to terrorist attacks or the whims of a foreign dictator.

The Post Carbon Institute is a think tank which provides alternatives to the present energy policy. For more information, please visit http://www.postcarbon.org/. They state:

The Post Carbon Institute's report concludes that we face serious, and heretofore unacknowledged, production constraints with shale gas that mean the following three things are very unlikely to happen:

1. Meeting the Energy Information Agency’s projections for natural gas to 2035.
2. Replacing significant amounts of coal-fired electricity with natural gas (not included in EIA projections).
3. Transitioning significant % of the vehicle fleet to burn natural gas (also not included in EIA projections).

All of three of these would require much higher levels of drilling and higher prices than projected by the EIA. At least 35,000 new wells will need to be drilled each and every year to meet EIA projections. More still to provide more natural gas-fired electricity and far more than this number to transition the vehicle fleet.

Source:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/16/976634/-Will-Natural-Gas-Fuel-America-Online-QA-Tomorrow?via=blog_491253

The fact that they would have to drill 35,000 new wells each year would directly affect Worth County -- Natural Gas interests would seek to locate here similar to what CAFO interests did in the region back in the 1980's and 1990's following the Farm Crisis. Where would they find all the land to drill all this natural gas? Our hunting, our fishing, and our farmlands are still our three most valuable assets here. Bring in the natural gas interests into the equation and you would take away our chief economic assets. And then what would we do once the natural gas runs out?

We have a much more sustainable path to an energy future free of foreign oil and free from the threat of terrorism -- put solar power on every rooftop and a wind farm in every town and we'll see how much we can shed our dependence on foreign oil. And while we're at it, let's invest in math and science so we can do it cheaper.