Share the Tyranny of Red Tape infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

The Federal Register is the rulebooks of regulations and rulings from Washington D.C. that tells American citizens, workplaces, and other governments what they can and cannot do, and what paperwork must be filled out to demonstrate that they’re all behaving as Washington wants. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank specializing in the study of government regulations, refers to the now 81,000-plus page tome as the “Ten Thousand Commandments.” It’s not light reading: Even if printed on newsprint-thin paper, 81,000-plus pages stacks up to book that is just shy of seven feet thick.

Wayne Crews, CEI’s vice president for policy, notes that regulations are the “third way” that Washington accomplishes its spending goals. Some goals are paid for using tax dollars, and others by borrowing money. But unlike these other options, federal regulations allow politicians to push the cost of their ideas onto somebody else’s budget. It adds up to very expensive hidden taxes. Counting up the cost of compliance the rules impose on the American people and institutions, Crews estimates an annual burden that now stands at $1.8 trillion.

Put in perspective: Actual taxes taken by the federal government are expected to be $2.7 trillion this year. That additional $1.8 trillion for rules roughly equals the entire economy of India, and exceeds the annual economic output of every American state except California.

The items on the list include just about every imaginable corner of American life. For example:

• Paperwork, telecommunications rules and mandates and more from the Federal Communications Commission racks up a $141 billion annual bill. Las Vegas would need to add more slot machines to cover that tab because the entire economy of Nevada doesn’t yet produce enough to get it done.

• Just the Environmental Protection Agency’s corn ethanol program dings us for $30 billion each year. That alone negates the annual economic output of Vermont.

• Financial paperwork requirements from the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Sarbanes-Oxley mandates and more, knocks out $57 billion per year. That’s roughly the entire Gross Domestic Product of Idaho.

The problem has been rapidly growing worse in recent years. The American Action Forum, using data from the White House, estimates that current regulatory paperwork burdens increase by 1.5 billion hours per year over the last couple of years, going from 8.8 billion in 2010 to 10.38 billion hours a couple of years later.

That last number equates to a jaw dropping 772,000 full time workers, “just to fill out red tape,” according to AAF. They note that you could build 220 new Empire State Buildings per year with such a workforce.

Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the cost of regulations on our economy and job creation. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families.

The post Ten Thousand Commandments: Counting the Cost of the Federal Rule Book appeared first on Job Creators Network.

  Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

Opponents of ”fracking” may be running out of places to turn for support.

For starters, it’s tough to argue with figures like these:

• The United States has surpassed Russia as the world’s largest exporter of refined petroleum products.

• The United States is a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time since 1949.

• The natural gas revolution will create an estimated 1.1 million American manufacturing jobs by 2020. That’s like creating more than two manufacturing jobs for every worker in Detroit over the next seven years.

And how about those new figures from the U.S. Geological Survey that say the oil and natural gas fields in the Dakotas and Montana alone have TWICE the recoverable oil that had previously been estimated and THREE TIMES as much recoverable natural gas than originally thought?

One of the only arguments left for the anti-fracking folks is that hydraulic fracturing – “fracking” – the process that’s led the boom in energy production, causes air and water pollution, creates greenhouse gas emissions and creates generally unsafe working conditions.

Even the Progressive Policy Institute, a progressive “think tank”, acknowledged in a 2011 report that “(i)t no longer makes sense to treat natural gas as just another dirty fossil fuel that the United States should stop burning as soon as we can find a feasible replacement.”

The PPI goes on to say that we can no longer ignore the long-term benefits of fracking as a way to extract our wealth of natural gas, especially given the fact that “(f)racking has been used for over 60 years in the U.S. in over a million natural gas wells. About 90 percent of both shale and conventional natural gas wells will be “fracked” at some point in their production life.”

And then there’s the jobs: “Today, the natural gas industry directly employs about 622,000 Americans nationwide and indirectly sustains almost 2.2 million additional jobs.”

As for safety, the PPI concludes that existing regulations are sufficient:

“As with harnessing any energy resource, there are dangers associated with extracting natural gas. Natural gas drilling is regulated in every state where it occurs and is also subject to certain federal regulations. Where  government authorities have found violations, well operators have been fined and in some cases barred from further drilling.”

The PPI cites data from the EPA and DOE that shows “natural gas production, delivery and combustion” have not increased greenhouse gas emissions since 1990.

Just this past April, the Associated Press also reported the EPA’s findings on greenhouse gas emissions:

“(T)he agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That’s about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates.”

An industry executive pointed out that “The methane ‘leak’ claim just got a lot more difficult for  opponents” (of natural gas).”

As for personal health and safety, Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan, President of the American Council on Science and Health, wrote that there have been no “documented instances of adverse health effects linked to fracking, nor have any occurrences of groundwater contamination been confirmed from the more than one million wells that have been hydraulically fractured over the past 50 years.”

The odds of convincing us that fracking is bad for the environment, economy and future of our country are moving from steep to nearly insurmountable.

Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post Fracking Safety – or Safely Fracking appeared first on Job Creators Network.

  Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

John Hickenlooper, the Democrat governor of Colorado and a geologist by training, recently sat down with energy industry representatives to discuss fracking fluid, the liquid used in the hydraulic fracturing process that is making it possible to collect vast new sources of American natural gas. They drank some of it. The Washington Times recounts Hickenlooper’s recent visit to Capitol Hill to tell the United States Senate about his new beverage:

“You can drink it. We did drink it around the table, almost rituallike, in a funny way,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “It was a demonstration. … they’ve invested millions of dollars in what is a benign fluid in every sense.”

~~~

Mr. Hickenlooper stressed that the Halliburton food additive mixture is so safe, one can literally drink it. He also cautioned against state and federal lawmakers going too far with laws to force companies such as Halliburton to disclose the formulas for such products.

“If we were overzealous in forcing them to disclose what they had created, they wouldn’t bring it into our state,” he said.

Back home in Colorado, according to the Denver Post, Gov. Hickenlooper preaches that it is “morally reckless” for the state and nation not to embrace natural gas:

“If you care about climate change, it’s morally wrong not to recognize how rapidly this could mitigate the effects of climate change,” Hickenlooper said of the potential of natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to coal.

Post columnist Vincent Carroll is also concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and portrays his governor as a true environmentalist who embraces sensible solutions – such as promoting natural gas – to address it. Carroll identifies anti-fracking activists as the “morally reckless” crowd Hickenlooper is talking about and says they have “grown disturbingly large, abusive and self-righteous.”

He also cites the work of New York Times environmental reporter Justin Gillis. In a recent article about China’s mad rush to build nuclear power plants so as to cut back on coal usage, Gillis definitively states that wind and solar “solutions” will not get the job done:

Many environmentalists believe that wind and solar power can be scaled to meet the rising demand, especially if coupled with aggressive efforts to cut waste. But a lot of energy analysts have crunched the numbers and concluded that today’s renewables, important as they are, cannot get us even halfway there.

~~~

A lot of smart people are coming to see the energy problem as the defining challenge of the 21st century. We have to supply power and transportation to an eventual population of 10 billion people who deserve decent lives, and we have to do it while limiting the emissions that threaten our collective future.

Gillis’ article is about a plan by Microsoft founder Bill Gates to develop nuclear reactors that run on nuclear waste.

Unlike the Democrat governor of Colorado, you don’t need to drink fracking fluid yourself to realize that there really is a sensible political and scientific consensus regarding the energy we need and the methods to produce it. A whole lot of that energy is right underneath our feet here in America. Back to the Denver Post article, Carroll says: “The problem with the debate over fracking is that some critics sincerely seek reasonable refinements to regulations while others will use any tool at hand to increase fracking’s costs in a quest to stop it altogether.”

 Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post Is Fracking Fluid Safe? Colorado’s Democrat Governor Drinks It! appeared first on Job Creators Network.

  Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

There’s an old fable about a dog in a manger. One website attributes it to Aesop and explains it this way:

In the fable, a dog went into a stable and fell asleep on the hay in a manger (an open box designed to hold food for livestock). Later a hungry ox (in some versions, a horse) entered the stable and tried to eat. But the dog, angry because it had been awakened, barked and snapped and would not let the animal eat.

Finally the ox said, “Dog, if you wanted to eat my dinner, I would have no objection. But you will neither eat it yourself nor let me enjoy it.”

Basically, a ‘dog in a manger’ is a person who neither uses or enjoys something, nor lets others use or enjoy it.

This describes the federal government when it comes to drilling for natural gas and oil on federal property. Decisions like the one last fall to make 1.6 million acres of land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming “off limits” to production of possibly “more than a trillion barrels of oil” lead to huge lost opportunities for both government revenue and the American economy.

When oil and gas companies want to drill on government owned land, they have to pay for it – it’s called a ‘lease’. The American Petroleum Institute explains that it’s basically a royalty payment made to the government based on the value of the oil and gas produced.

And with the going rate at least one-eighth the value of production, these ‘leases’ are also one of the federal government’s largest sources of non-tax income. In 2007, the government collected $9.4 billion in oil and gas royalties. The API tells us that half the money goes to the U.S. Treasury, $900 million to the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the rest goes to states in which the federal land is located.

So by being all “dog in the manger-ish” and not opening federal lands and waters to oil and gas leasing, The Institute for Energy Research tells us what we’re missing out on:

Tax revenues:

•Federal – $24 billion a year for the next seven years, $86 billion annually thereafter; $2.7 TRILLION over 37 years.

•State and local – $10.3 billion annual state and local tax revenue over the next seven years, $35.5 billion annually thereafter; $1.1 TRILLION over 37 years.

Jobs:

• 552,000 more high-wage, high skill jobs annually over the next seven years, nearly 2 million jobs annually over the next 30 years

Wages:

• $32 billion increase in annual wages over the next seven years, $115 billion a year between seven and 30 years, $3.7 TRILLION cumulative increase over 37 years.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP):

• $127 billion annually for the next seven years, $450 billion annually in the next 30 years,$14.4 TRILLION cumulative increase in economic activity over the next 37 years.

• If that $127 billion per year in immediate lost economic output were a state, it would exceed the annual GDP of 18 other states and Washington D.C.

The government dog is even being snooty about the land and water on which it had allowed energy production.

Following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, the feds enacted various moratoriums which, according to the IER, has led to decreased crude oil production on federal lands of 15 percent over the past two years and 23 percent in offshore production. Natural gas production on land is also down 15 percent over that same time frame, and down 32 percent in offshore production.

No word on what the ox did after the dog spurned him from eating at the manger. My guess is that the ox simply found someplace else to thrive. Our nation’s job creators should not be forced to do the same. 

 Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post Drill Baby Drill: Why We Need Oil and Gas from Government Property appeared first on Job Creators Network.

  Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

Last month, the U.S. Geological Survey released a report with the jaw-dropping news that oil and natural gas fields covering the Dakotas and Montana have TWICE the recoverable oil that had previously been estimated and THREE TIMES as much recoverable natural gas as originally thought possible. (“Recoverable” is energy industry geek-speak for “stuff that we can pull out of the ground without inventing any new tricks or tools.”) The news was exciting because this region of the country had already become an important new producer of oil and natural gas, part of a trend that has revolutionized the American energy industry and is widely predicted to totally remake the U.S. economy.

The previous estimate of the region’s resource riches was conducted in 2008. Even though it showed just HALF of the oil and natural gas wealth now assumed, that estimate from five years ago was enough to touch off the boomtown atmosphere. Two years ago, production had jumped 50 percent in just a 12 month period, and even at that time was kicking out so much oil it exceeded the pipeline capacity built to haul it away. Energy companies were forced to resort to using trucks and rail to get the job done.

By last year, the New York Times was reporting starting salaries in the oil and natural gas industry for mere high school graduates had reached $50,000 in Sidney, Montana.

The Times also located a convenience store cashier in Williston, North Dakota, who made $24 an hour for a part-time job. She was still in high school. The store’s business was skyrocketing, due to the flood of energy industry workers coming through its doors each day. The voracious demand for even unskilled workers at the oil and gas sites meant pay rates for convenience store cashiers had to keep pace. Everyone was getting rich off the boom.

Even before this latest big news about vastly more oil and natural gas in the Dakotas and Montana, the United States had surpassed Russia as the world’s largest producer of finished petroleum products and had become a net exporter of same for the first time since 1949.

These are trends that will only continue.

A report from CitiBank last year predicted this gusher of domestic energy production would cause the U.S. economy to grow as much as $624 billion larger by 2020. This would be the equivalent of adding the economic firepower of another state nearly as big as Florida, in just a seven year period, simply because of the newfound wealth from the domestic oil and natural gas industry.

Needless to say, a lot of new big-paying jobs for the whole nation – not just the Dakotas and Montana – were going to be on the way even before we found out that there’s even more where that came from. Natural gas is a major feedstock for manufacturing, and CitiBank had originally predicted that producing it cheaply at home could mean an additional 1.1 million manufacturing jobs for American workers will be created over just the next seven years. 

 Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post American Energy Boomtown Only Getting Bigger appeared first on Job Creators Network.

  Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

Now that we’re finally starting to thaw from winter, my home state of Michigan is gearing up for the next season. Not Spring – which we officially look forward to – but “Orange Barrel” season, which we dread. Over the next nine months or so, drivers in Michigan can look forward to our highways and byways existing in various stages of construction

The transition our roads endure during “Orange Barrel” season is not unlike the road to greater energy independence in the United States through oil and natural gas. While undoubtedly still under construction, this road should be an easy, straight avenue toward tapping into more than one trillion barrels of recoverable oil trapped underground (four times that of Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, by the way) and nearly three quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas. (enough to keep us ‘naturally gassed’ up for 120 years, according to the Institute for Energy Research)

This particular road, though, has a dozens of side streets which are themselves in varying degrees of construction and confusion, due in great part to differing special interests. Some are even dead ends.

These side streets are individual states which are making – or breaking – their own futures in the emerging American energy boom based on the technique known in the neighborhood as ‘fracking’. Short for “hydraulic fracturing”, the term simply means squirting stuff (like water or chemicals) into the ground under high pressure to break up rocks and release natural gas or oil so we can use it.

That last part, about ‘squirting stuff’ into the ground, is what’s led to the confusing mess of road construction among the states with one shining – and rather surprising – exception.

Let’s take New York for starters. The State Assembly there just voted to impose a two year moratorium on fracking to allow the governor’s administration “to consider state, federal, university and private sector studies,” with the key study being a Pennsylvania-based health review called the Geisinger study. The problem: An Associated Press report says these fracking orange barrels will likely be up longer than two years, and while some preliminary data may be released within a year, complete Geisinger study results are ‘likely years away’.

New Yorkers should consider a recent Reuters report which cited a health department report that said fracking “would not be a danger to public health in New York state so long as proper safeguards were put into place” and pointed out a Manhattan Institute study which said Natural gas drilling in New York could mean “$11.4 billion in economic output and raise $1.4 billion in state and local tax revenue.”

Instead, New York state gets a two year roadblock on potential job creation and energy independence.

Then there are states constructing total dead ends. The website foodandwaterwatch.org tracks anti-fracking measures across the country. According to its interactive map, Vermont is the only state so far to pass an outright fracking ban. Massachusetts, Maryland and New Mexico are in the queue with pending legislation, as are many local communities.

Michigan activists tried, and failed to get an anti-fracking proposal on the November, 2012 ballot. Undeterred, they’re trying again for 2014, ignoring the fact that Michigan’s Antrim shale formation has been the 13th largest source of natural gas in the United States. Michiganders may be well served to check out another interactive map, this one by the Institute for 21st Century Energy, which shows the Wolverine state could gain 64,551 jobs and raise $724 million by 2020 by allowing us to get at energy buried in our shale.

Charts aside, Michiganders – and folks in all the other states – should take a good hard look at what has just happened in Illinois. Lawmakers in the Land of Lincoln have figured out a way for energy companies and environmentalists, lined up along opposing sides of the street, to agree on a way to construct a single, straight and narrow energy-via-fracking roadway that mostly sits well with everyone.

It must be a first. Even the Huffington Post described it as “Illinois Fracking Bill Sees Rare Cooperation Between Environmentalists, Industry”

And Bloomberg Businessweek called the legislation “unusual” because “(I)t was negotiated with the help of industry and environmental groups.” Among the provisions of Illinois House Bill 2615:

— All fracking wastewater must be stored in closed tanks.

— Fracking chemicals must be disclosed publicly, with limits on information that may be deemed a trade secret.

— Citizens may request a public hearing on proposed permits and may appeal permits that have been granted.

— The state may deny permits during droughts.

— Energy companies must test groundwater before and after fracking to identify potential contamination.

— Drillers are presumed liable for contamination that appears near their operations after fracking begins.

— Injection of diesel fuel is banned, and nearby abandoned wells must be plugged.

— Venting and flaring of natural gas is restricted.

— A detailed application must be posted on a state website.

— Fracking wells may not be drilled within 1,500 feet of a public water supply intake; within 500 feet of any residence, school, hospital or existing drinking water well or spring; within 750 feet of a nature preserve; or within 300 feet of a waterway.

Whether or not Illinois considered the 66,604 jobs and $729 million in revenue as projected by the Institute for 21st Century Energy in the deliberations, the state was able to knock aside the roadblocks and pave the way to join the energy boom.

What’s most encouraging about Illinois’ deal is the narrative that has been created by the Associated Press, which says the deal on fracking could be a “National Model”.

If this is the case, then unlike other political elements that have sprung from Illinois to the national stage,  Illinois has through leadership, cooperation and example, shown the nation a roadmap to potential job creation and energy independence. Minus the orange barrels. 

 Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post Did Illinois Find a Way to Stop the Fighting Over Fracking? appeared first on Job Creators Network.

  Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

The term “Saudi America” may be a stretch, but a mammoth study suggests that with proper care and feeding, North America could very well bump the Middle East as Earth’s top energy supplier.

The study, released by worldwide financial giant Citi (the Global Perspectives & Solutions arm of it) came out in March, 2012. And it came at a good time. According to Citi, North America has been the fastest growing oil and natural gas producing area of the world for the past half-decade, to the point that for the first time since 1949, the United States has become a net exporter of petroleum products. The U.S. has even surpassed Russia as the world’s largest refined petroleum exporter.

Here are some of the other big takeaways to keep in mind when you hear about energy in the news:

• North America has five “liquid” resources that could make it become the largest source of new supply in the next decade: oil sands production in Canada, deepwater in the US and Mexico, oil from shale and tight sands, natural gas liquids (NGLs) associated with the production of natural gas, and biofuels.

• North American crude oil & natural gas liquids could nearly double to 27 million barrels per day by 2020. That’s up  from 15.4 million in 2011.

• U.S. demand has fallen by some two million barrels of petroleum products per day since its peak in 2005. This is due in part because of the recession, demographic changes, rising efficiency standards and new technology that make it easier and more efficient to use alternative fuels like natural gas.

• New energy production combined with less consumption may increase the nation’s real gross domestic product by 2 to 3.3% – or $370 to $624 billion (in 2005 figures). That’s equal to the economic output of adding a new state slightly smaller than Florida.

• Becoming more energy independent means North America is not as vulnerable to oil price spikes. This means changes going on in other countries that produce oil and natural gas is not as geopolitically important to the United States.

NBC News picked up on the Citi report and submitted its own series on the new North American energy boom:

• In just five years the U.S. may no longer need to import oil from any source but Canada.

• China passed the United States in December to become the world’s leading importer of oil – the first time in nearly 40 years that the U.S. didn’t own that distinction.

• That same month, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania together produced 1.5 million barrels of oil a day — more than Iran exported.

And here is a parting thought. The only thing that can stop North America from becoming the “New Middle East” is politics. Citi says this could happen in the following ways:

• Environmentalists getting the upper hand over supply in the U.S.

• First Nations impeding pipeline expansion in Canada

• Mexican production continuing to trip over the Mexican Constitution

• Impeding foreign investment or technology transfers — in North America itself.
   

Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post North America – The New Middle East appeared first on Job Creators Network.

  Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

The 1997 Kyoto Agreement aimed to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike just about every other developed nation on earth, the United States refused to ratify it. Some hard line environmental activists have portrayed the refusal as a sign that America is indifferent to the problem of climate change.

But here’s a strange fact: The United States is meeting and even exceeding the targeted emissions reductions called for by the Kyoto Agreement, without really trying. And we’re getting RICHER because of it.

So says Bernard L. Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University, writing in the Houston Chronicle. The dirty – or rather CLEAN – secret has been natural gas, which Americans now have in abundance due to new discoveries and new techniques for getting it out of the ground, such as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Weinstein points out that American greenhouse emissions are lower today than they were 20 years ago – well before Kyoto was signed.

“This decline has not occurred because of clean energy’s contribution to the nation’s power mix,” he says. “Renewable energy today accounts for less than five percent of electricity generation capacity nationwide.”

Instead, it’s because we make more electricity with natural gas:

“Since 2005, 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation have been retired and another 15,000 megawatts will be off-line by 2016. These coal plants are being replaced primarily by natural gas, which has a carbon footprint about half that of coal. Whereas in 2005 45 percent of America’s electricity was being generated by coal, by 2016 that percentage will be less than 30, with natural gas taking up the slack. The result will be even lower carbon emissions.”

We already have a natural gas supply that was projected to last at least a century, but more is being discovered all the time. A reserve under the Dakotas and Montana – already producing way above historical levels – was recently revealed to have three times more underground than previously assumed.

Ratifying Kyoto and allowing politicians to pick the power that we use was expected to cost jobs and harm the American economy, and is the main reason the U.S. opted out. But the unexpected domestic natural gas boom will mean both lower greenhouse emissions AND much higher prosperity for companies beyond just those in the energy sector.

One reason: Natural gas is a major component of manufacturing. Weinstein explains:

“For example, natural gas, and natural gas liquids such as propane, butane and pentane, are the primary inputs to the petrochemical industry, which makes the building blocks for plastics, pharmaceuticals and many other products. Whereas a decade ago the U.S. was a net importer of petrochemicals, thanks to the shale gas revolution we are once again a net exporter of petrochemicals.”

Last year, CitiBank projected that this much plentiful and inexpensive natural gas being added to the American economy would create as many as 1.1 million additional manufacturing jobs before the end of the decade. 

 Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post Greenhouse Gasses Falling – Natural Gas to Blame appeared first on Job Creators Network.

 Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

The film “Gasland” is a documentary that supposedly demonstrates the environmental hazards of hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking.”

If you read the straight ahead facts, you’ll learn that fracking is a horizontal drilling technology that has revolutionized natural gas and oil production in the United States, holding out the promise of jobs, prosperity and perhaps an America that finally hits a long range goal of being functionally independent of petroleum imports from unstable overseas governments. But watch Gasland and you’ll get a much more panicked message about kitchen faucets lighting on fire and contaminated groundwater. Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason Magazine, clears the air (and the water) in a review of both the film and the promise of fracking.

He finds the dramatic claims in ‘Gasland’ to be outright false and/or wildly exaggerated:

Contamination of drinking water wells by fracking was dramatized in the dishonest documentary Gasland in which a homeowner in Colorado used a cigarette lighter to cause his running faucet to flame up. As it happens, an analysis by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission found that the natural gas in that homeowner’s well was from natural sources and was not related to fracking [PDF] as claimed in Gasland.

Gasland also highlighted claims by some residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania that fracking had contaminated their well water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has now sampled drinking water wells that served 64 homes. In July 2012, the agency reported finding no contaminants related to fracking, although 5 wells did have elevated levels of naturally occurring hazardous substances such as manganese.

An initial EPA study did find that water wells in Pavillion, Wyoming were likely contaminated with chemicals associated with fracking; however, that agency finding continues to be contested by pro-fracking proponents. A peer-reviewed study of the EPA’s testing results is supposed to be released later this year. If Pavillion is the only confirmed example of contamination out of thousands of wells drilled each year, then it cannot be the case that fracking is a particularly hazardous activity with regard to well water.

He also looks into ‘Promised Land.’ the Matt Damon anti-fracking film: “Promised Land offers a false choice between rural purity and virtuous poverty on the one hand and industrial degradation and rapacious greed on the other.”

Interestingly, the Heritage Foundation revealed that a goodly chunk of the funding for ‘Promised Land’ came from the royal family of the United Arab Emirates – an OPEC nation with a lot to lose if the United States experiences a huge boom in domestic energy production and no longer need to import so much from overseas.

Bailey’s conclusion is that the benefits of fracking vastly outweigh the costs. He cites an estimate from a Canadian bank showing Americans will save $75 billion in home heating costs this year, merely because of the natural gas boom already brought about from fracking. That’s $650 per household.

For comparison: there are about a dozen states with economies in the neighborhood of $75 billion or smaller.

And saving money on home heating is just the start. We’re early in the natural gas revolution in America and the biggest benefits are all in front of us. 

  Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post Hollywood’s Fracking Bad Thinking appeared first on Job Creators Network.

 Share the infographic with friends on Facebook and Twitter 

Remember the dire predictions from just a few short years ago that fuel shortages would soon challenge the American and world economies?

Well, it turns out the contrary is true. There is a lot of petroleum and natural gas trapped deep in rock formations underneath the United States and other nations. In fact, there’s enough to make North America energy independent and at the same time create huge opportunities for jobs and wealth for Americans.

A big part of the success is an old drilling technology that is now being used more efficiently: Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

The standard idea most people have of oil and natural gas wells is that they tap into vast underground lakes of oil or huge pockets of natural gas. While large pools of fuel do exist in some cases, lots of the world’s energy is wedged in much smaller places – literally between layers of rock and trapped within rocks. Terms such as “tight oil,” “tight gas,” and “shale gas” are often used to describe these energy resources that exist more than a mile underground.

More than 60 years ago, engineers developed a method of releasing and capturing this trapped energy. They drill pipes deep into the earth and then shoot in pressurized water and sand over several weeks, literally causing the rocks to fracture, thus the name “fracking.”

Shale gas diagram, from U.S. Dept of Energy and U.S. Geological Survey

These fractures release the oil or natural gas, which then flows to the pipes and up to the surface. This process has been used more than 2.5 million times since first developed, and one million times in the United States alone. Industry experts now estimate that more than half of all new oil and gas wells use fracking.

Recently, 3-D imaging technology has allowed geologists to better predict where natural gas and oil are trapped. Energy companies have also developed the ability to drill fracking pipes that can turn horizontally once deep into the ground, rather than just bore straight down. Put together, these two improvements on the old trick of fracking have unlocked a huge energy future for the United States.

For example: It is estimated that we can now cheaply reach at least a 100 year supply of natural gas, with more being discovered all the time. The astonishing wealth in natural gas will mean that it – rather than coal – may soon become the primary source fuel for making electricity in America. Using natural gas rather than gasoline as a truck and automotive fuel is also a more viable possibility. In addition to being cheaper for the customer, natural gas also burns much cleaner than coal or gasoline.

A recent report from CitiBank estimates that the energy boom caused in large part by advances in fracking will add as many as 3.6 million new jobs to the American economy by 2020. That’s like adding an economy twice the size of Ireland, in just seven years. CitiBank projects 1.1 million of these jobs will be in the manufacturing sector. This is equal to providing more than two manufacturing jobs for every working age adult in the city of Detroit. 

 Job Creators Network has created an infographic to help get the word out about the benefits of the American energy boom. Please go to the Facebook page and Twitter feed and share it with your employees, co-workers, friends and families. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The post What is Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”)? appeared first on Job Creators Network.