“Energy is the master resource, because energy enables us to convert one material into another. As natural scientists continue to learn more about the transformation of materials from one form to another with the aid of energy, energy will be even more important.”

– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 162.

Energy is the master resource, as Simon says. Even anti-energy zealots have admitted as much in their more sober moments. “A reliable and affordable supply of energy is absolutely critical to maintaining and expanding economic prosperity where such prosperity already exists and to creating it where it does not,” Obama’s science advisor John Holdren once said. (1)

UK Energy Trouble

The indispensability of affordable, plentiful energy has come to the fore as anti-energy policies have collided against human needs.…

Remember all this? America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T. Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. Well, reality intervened. We are having an energy transformation, but just the opposite of what the non-market energy planners predicted.

Shale Gas Revolution

Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.

Within a year, U.S. recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates.…

Congress is rightfully concerned about closing the huge, systemic budget deficit. In this climate, eliminating Section 1603 grants for politically correct renewable energy should be considered an easy target.

By way of background, this particular subsidy came about due to persistent pressure from lobbying groups like American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Their main argument is that these grants will promote jobs and economic benefits. Of course, as lobbyists this is what they are paid to say. But in these times of more focused financial prudence, we need to critically look at such expenditures in a more objective light — especially since we are talking about some five billion dollars.

The 1603 Grants should be cancelled entirely. In my view the best way to see how ineffective these expenditures are is to consider what the alternatives are for this same money.…

Author’s note: No, I have not been in a cave for the past two weeks.  The impacts of unconventional gas on energy markets will be measured in months and years, not in days and weeks.  There is essentially nothing that current unconventional gas production can do to moderate crisis-driven escalation of oil prices and oil-linked LNG prices in the next few weeks.

In Part I and Part II of this series, the impacts of unconventional gas discoveries in the U.S., Australia, Canada and elsewhere were explored.  Gas-to-gas competition was seen as a powerful force for price moderation.

U.S. shale gas discoveries and production from coal bed methane (CBM) have already provided great benefits for energy consumers in the Atlantic Basin.  Gas-to-gas competition – shale v. LNG – has led to interesting market outcomes and investments. …