THE CASE FOR HYDROFRACKING - Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know - page 37

For decades, the dialogue about oil and gas has been built on a paradigm of
limited supply, declining production, and volatile pricing. These assumptions were
based on the pioneering work of M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist who in the
1950s forecast that American oil production would peak in 1971. 4

Shale gas re-

serves have turned those assumptions on their head.
The United States produced less oil in 2012 than in 1971—Hubbert was cor-
rect—and prices remained high. Yet America produced more oil in 2012 than in
any year since 1994, and natural gas production is nearing record levels. In 2000,
shale gas represented merely 2 percent of the nation's energy supply; by 2012, it
was 37 percent. 5
The abundance of gas has set off ripples throughout the US economy, with nu-
merous additional impacts. As power companies substitute gas for coal in their
generators, for instance, consumers benefit from lower prices. This switch has led
to another important boon: a significant reduction in CO 2 emissions.
“One thing is clear,” writes Steven Mufson, an energy and financial news re-
porter at the Washington Post . “Tumbling natural gas prices have changed every
calculation and assumption about the energy business.”

How Many Jobs Does Hydrofracking Create?

The development of shale resources supported 600,000 jobs in 2010, a number that
the American Petroleum Institute (API) reports is “constantly increasing.” 6 Many
economists believe that the boom in hydrofracked fuels—the “shale gale”—will
continue to rev the economy for years to come, and could give the United States
a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. 7 Ed Morse, a Citigroup energy
analyst, predicts that by 2020 the natural gas industry will have created some three
million new American jobs. Hydrofracking, he says, will add up to 3 percent to
America's gross domestic product and trillions of dollars of tax revenue. 8 In his
2012 State of the Union address, President Obama approvingly cited an estimate
by the natural gas industry that hydrofracking will supply a century's worth of gas
reserves and 600,000 new jobs by 2030. 9
If the hydrofracking boom in the Marcellus Shale is any indication, he could be
right. The Marcellus remains relatively untapped, but in 2009 hydrofracking there
created over 44,000 new jobs in Pennsylvania, $389 million in state and local tax
revenue, and nearly $4 billion in value added to the state's economy. 10 In the same
year in West Virginia, which also sits atop the Marcellus, fracking added 13,000