Shale Gas Reserves Could Reignite U.S. Economy

[Beet]

In late 1998, Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK), an independent natural-gas producer based in Oklahoma City, exemplified an industry in decline.

The company’s stock price had fallen over two years from above $34 a share to 75 cents. Its market value tumbled 93 percent, to $72 million. “They’re running up a down escalator,” Michael Spohn, an analyst at Petroleum Research Group, said.

...

Good thing he didn’t sell. Thirteen years later, Chesapeake’s market value exceeds $18 billion. Its shares sell for about $28, up 8 percent this year. The company’s 120-acre neo-Georgian corporate campus bustles with construction crews building new office space. Its workforce has grown 30 percent in a year, to 12,200, and its recruiters have 700 jobs to fill. “The United States,” McClendon boasts, “has the capacity to become the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”

[opebo]

This sort of thing doesn't ignite a large scale economy, Keynesian demand-lead growth dwarfs any hydrocarbon pop-fizzle.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I'm skeptical.  Sure, we have hit major paydirt with gas, oil remains the most important fossil fuel by a long shot.. and its applications go far beyond energy.  But then, we'll probably be driving natural gas cars in 10 years... so maybe we will see a boom.

[Wonkish1]

I'm skeptical.  Sure, we have hit major paydirt with gas, oil remains the most important fossil fuel by a long shot.. and its applications go far beyond energy.  But then, we'll probably be driving natural gas cars in 10 years... so maybe we will see a boom.

Its looking like that is increasingly likely. From the west coast to Oklahoma the amount of gas stations selling pressurized natural gas for vehicles is shooting through the roof. There are at least a thousand of them already and this development has occurred just in the last couple years.

The cost to retrofit your car to run on pressurized nat gas is only a couple thousand and then you can used these stations and the beauty of it is that you can switch back and forth between nat gas and gasoline from inside of your car.

But for the most part the biggest market that is utilizing this nat gas to fuel their vehicles is semi's and other big trucks. At the rate they are going the majority of semi's in this country will be capable of fueling up on nat gas within the decade.

This should be a good sign for those that want a cleaner environment. Nat gas is much cleaner than than gasoline. And guess what it is happening without even taxing the living hell out of carbon.

[Jacobtm]

Doubt it would reignite our economy.

Would allow more broke teenagers to drive around aimlessly smoking weed like in the good ol days.