The Wall Street Journal reports:
A massive natural-gas discovery here in northern Louisiana heralds a big shift in the nation’s energy landscape. After an era of declining production, the U.S. is now swimming in natural gas.
Even conservative estimates suggest the Louisiana discovery — known as the Haynesville Shale, for the dense rock formation that contains the gas — could hold some 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s the equivalent of 33 billion barrels of oil, or 18 years’ worth of current U.S. oil production. Some industry executives think the field could be several times that size. … One industry-backed study estimates the U.S. has more than 2,200 trillion cubic feet of gas waiting to be pumped, enough to satisfy nearly 100 years of current U.S. natural-gas demand.
But don’t count on all that natural gas to be developed yet. The Obama administration wants to slap a massive energy tax on natural gas to pay for their trillion dollar deficits.
Some on the left, like Speaker Nancy Pelsoi (D-CA), have claimed that a carbon tax would help natural gas production. Pelosi told Meet the Press:
I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels. … These investments in wind, in solar and biofuels and focus on natural gas, these are the real alternatives.
But as the Energy Information Administration (EIA) “Energy Kids Page” explains, natural gas is indeed a fossil fuel that emits carbon when turned into energy. Therefore any carbon cap and trade plan would limit natural gas production by slapping a punitive energy tax on it. This would mean higher energy and tranportaiton costs for consumers and less jobs for everybody.
