“According to a recent ICF study, the Northeast will host more than one-fourth of all U.S. capacity expansions for natural gas pipeline investment through 2020 and about a third of NGL pipeline capacity. According to the study, the Marcellus, all told, is projected to stimulate nearly $70 billion in investments in natural-gas and NGL-related infrastructure through 2035.”

Pennsylvania was the birthplace of the oil and natural gas industry in the 1800s. A century and a half later, the Marcellus shale play has once again put Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the energy headlines.

This time the focus is on natural gas more than oil–and with wells that are at least one hundred times deeper than the first oil well drilled in 1859. The rapid growth in supplies in an area exceptionally close to major demand markets has been a benefit to regional economic growth and has helped reduce U.S.…

“Diminishing returns are opposed by increasing knowledge, both of the earth’s crust and of methods of extraction and use. The price of oil, like that of any mineral, is the uncertain fluctuating result of the conflict.”

– M. A. Adelman, quoted in Michael Lynch, “Morris A. Adelman, Petroleum Economist, Has Passed Away,” Forbes, May 9, 2014.

A giant of petroleum economics, MIT economist Morry Adelman, died last week at the age of 96.  (A short mention in the Boston Globe is here.)

Unlike the Malthusians and peak-oilers in particular, Adelman kept his eye on marginal costs and institutions (resource ownership, government policy) to understand that oil was not a fixed, depleting asset but, at least potentially, a super-abundant, expanding one. To grow and thrive, petroleum needed market incentives just like plants need water to grow and thrive.…

“The Nobels assert that, ‘The myth that tar sands development is inevitable and will find its way to market by rail if not pipeline is a red herring.’ But alternate delivery via rail is not a myth; it’s a massive and growing reality. Maybe before writing to Secy. Kerry, the Nobels should read the State Department’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) on the KXL, especially Chapter 4: Market Analysis.”

It is the common tale of two presidents who both declared war on fossil fuels. In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter’s petroleum price and allocation regulations, premised on the belief that we were running out of supply, put America in the gasoline lines. Thirty-five years later, depletion fears refuted, Carter champions a letter to President Obama urging rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline segment (the last of four legs) on easily refutable arguments, discussed below.…

[Editor note: Part I yesterday described Ken Green’s current responsibilities at the Fraser Institute and Canadian energy/environmental issues. Today’s post covers Green’s early interest, education,  and career in environmentalism.]

MR: When did you first become interested in environmental science?

KG: I was always interested in nature as a kid. I remember catching frogs at a nearby golf course when I was 5, and I grew up in California camping in the various state parks, where I was always interested in catching critters and playing with them. Lizards, horned toads, snakes, small rodents, whatever I could catch. I also loved science, and remember the name of my 6^th grade science teacher, Mr. Jahn, who made studying science fun.

I used to go out to the Mojave Desert a lot with my mother, who was a real character.…