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This endorsement runs against every energy policy pursued by the Obama Administration for three years

Obama Discovers Shale Gas



A re-election campaign is a terrible thing to waste, and this year's race is already producing miraculous changes at the Obama White House: The latest example of a bear walking on its hind legs is the President's new embrace of ... natural gas from shale. The catch is that this endorsement runs against every energy policy pursued by the Obama Administration for three years. It's certainly smart politics for Mr. Obama to distance himself from the anti-fossil fuels obsessives, and no doubt his political advisers are hoping it helps this fall in the likes of Ohio and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, this could be a one-year wonder, and if he wins Mr. Obama might revert to form in 2013. –- Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 17 January 2012
A shale-driven glut of natural gas has cut electricity prices for the U.S. power industry by 50 percent and reduced investment in costlier sources of energy. With abundant new supplies of gas making it the cheapest option for new power generation, the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc., has shelved plans for new U.S. wind projects next year and Exelon Corp. called off plans to expand two nuclear plants. Michigan utility CMS Energy Corp. canceled a $2 billion coal plant after deciding it wasn’t financially viable in a time of “low natural-gas prices linked to expanded shale-gas supplies,” according to a company statement. --Julie Johnsson and Mark Chediak, Bloomberg, 17 January 2012 The huge, belching smokestacks of electric power plants have long symbolized air pollution woes. But a shift is under way: More and more electric plants around the nation are being fuelled by natural gas, which is far cleaner than coal, the traditional fuel. --Kevin Begos, Associated Press, 16 January 2012

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If Europe must wait before it can share in the U.S. gas bonanza, could it create a boom of its very own? That also seems unlikely. France has already banned shale gas drilling and its oil company Total is spending its money in the U.S. Poland seems to be the only country in Europe embracing it, although early drilling results there have been mixed. Opposition to shale drilling is also growing in the U.S., but in some parts of Europe it threatens to strangle the industry at birth. --James Herron, The Wall Street Journal, 16 January 2012 I knew the history of methane in Pennsylvania's water was an old story. Cannot believe they missed this story in Pennsylvania in 1783. Tom Paine, George Washington and naturally occurring methane. The modern day Tea Party should have jumped on this one. --Nick Grealy, No Hot Air, 15 January 2012 In the fall of the year that New York was evacuated (1783), General Washington had his headquarters at Mrs. Berrian's, at Rocky Hill, in Jersey , and I was there; the Congress then sat at Prince Town. We had several times been told that the river or creek, that runs near the bottom of Rocky Hill, and over which there is a mill, might be set on fire, for that was the term the country people used; and as General Washington had a mind to try the experiment, General Lincoln, who was also there, undertook to make preparation for it against the next evening, November fifth. This was to be done, as we were told, by disturbing the mud at the bottom of the river, and holding something in a blaze, as paper or straw, a little above the surface of the water. When the mud at the bottom was disturbed by the poles, the air bubbles rose fast, and I saw the fire take from General Washington’s light and descend from thence to the surface of the water, in a similar manner as when a lighted candle is held so as to touch the smoke of a candle just blown out, the smoke will take fire, and the fire will descend and light up the candle. This was demonstrative evidence that what was called setting the river on fire was setting on fire the inflammable air that arose out of the mud. -- Thomas Paine, The Cause of the Yellow Fever, and the Means of Preventing it, in Places not yet infected with it, Addressed to the Board of Health in America, New York, 27 June 1809


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