Energy News
“Haynesville” Documentary Director Featured in Houston Chronicle
“It was like the crazy miner who comes in from the hills saying he has found gold,” said Kallenberg, a former newspaper reporter and cable television writer turned documentary filmmaker. But what he thought would be a film about the people in the middle of a mad rush for drilling rights ended up being something bigger, a story about the nation’s energy future.
Kallenberg took a few minutes from preparing for a screening of the movie at the Copenhagen climate change conference this week to speak with Chronicle reporter Tom Fowler by phone about his filmHaynesville.
Q: What’s your elevator-pitch description of the movie?
A: Haynesville follows the momentous discovery of what is looking like it will be the largest natural gas field in the country. The film itself looks at the discovery from the perspective of three people’s lives and how they’re affected by the find. One is a single mom fighting for her community’s land rights. One is an African-American preacher who’s trying to use the proceeds from the Haynesville to build a Christian school. And the other is a self-described good ol’ boy who becomes an overnight millionaire. The other part that’s woven in between these personal stories is what this vast amount of energy means. What does it mean when you find 170 TCF of natural gas? How does that impact the national energy picture and eventually the energy future?
Q: Energy documentaries tend to be preachy environmental pieces or pro-industry, heavy-on-the-economics films. Where does Haynesville come out?
A: My background is journalism, and being a journalist I was always taught to present things in a balanced way and let the reader pick though the facts and decide what they thought about the story. I approached this film in the very same way. What I had to do was walk a very fine line. It’s the line of not being preachy and not being pro-industry. This is a piece that shows in a very balanced way where energy comes from and what effect it has on the people at the ground level. We all use energy, and using energy, it’s important to know how we get it. And it’s important to know what this energy could do for the nation’s future.
Another thing that we did with the film very consciously is there are no industry people speaking on the expert side. We strictly use academics, pundits and environmentalists. So when all of the sudden you have (environmentalist author) Bill McKibben saying that natural gas is a good solution to take us from where we are to a more green and clean energy future, it has huge impact. That was a conscious decision not to use energy people that has paid dividends because audiences are coming out of the film thinking a different way.
Q: How do you think the movie changes audience opinions on drilling?
A: We’ve now shown this film in Louisiana, in New York, in England, and we’re about to show it in Copenhagen at the climate summit. What we’re seeing with the audience is an empirical change in the way they think. I think people know how much coal we use in the United States. But I don’t think people know how clean a fossil fuel natural gas is. I don’t think people know there’s no utility-level storage for renewables. Bringing these things to the table really does change an audience. During the Q&A at the end of the film, you really expect the audience to want to talk about the personal stories, but they want to talk about energy and natural gas and how they had no idea these facts were there. Especially in Europe, these guys come in with a preconceived notion of what an oil company is and what they do, or what fossil fuels are. The European audiences came out very positive to some of the notions that came out at the end of the film.
Read entire interview and comment on story…
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Energizing Peace – Foreign Policy magazine
The lessons of geography appear to be ignored by policymakers in Washington D.C. these days. The Obama administration is pursuing tenuous negotiations with Iran regarding its supply of low-enriched uranium, in the hopes of taking the first step to erase the longstanding animosity between the two countries. It is also rethinking its Afghanistan and Pakistan policy to emphasize reconstruction and economic development. These two strategies are unfortunately disconnected — despite the fact that Afghanistan shares a 600-mile-long strategic border with Iran.
Neither a “surge” of troops and aid in Afghanistan, nor negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program without addressing its regional isolation, will bring Central Asia much closer to stability. The United States must support a policy that addresses the major deficiency all these countries share in common: a lack of clean, affordable energy for their poor populations. Only natural gas pipelines, not military supply lines, can do this.
The United States has so far been ambivalent about using Central Asia’s natural resources to guide its policy, confounding the prospects for pipeline development. Yet without an energy infrastructure, individual U.S. reconstruction programs are going to struggle to get off the ground. For example, the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) established in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which provide goods produced in these areas with duty-free access to the U.S. market, will have little impact without a steady energy supply to fuel local industry. Pipelines and power lines can be a much more significant economic stimulus. By providing energy for power-starved nations, they can empower microeconomic activity through lower fuel and electricity costs.
Natural gas pipelines can also provide an impetus for a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. Two proposed pipeline routes currently offer the greatest opportunity to solidify regional integration and create lasting stability: the route from Iran via Pakistan to India (IPI), and from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan to India (TAPI). But thus far, the U.S. had sought to hinder international commerce with Iran, lobbying only for pipeline routes that avoid Iranian territory. It actively lobbied against the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) project – even despite its tacit acceptance of the pipeline that runs between Iran and Turkey. This Iran-Turkey pipeline, which traverses Turkey’s volatile Kurdish region, also exemplifies how security along such infrastructure can be adequately provided, even in conflict zones.
The IPI pipeline might represent the most promising confidence-building measure with Iran. Furthermore, recent discussions surrounding TAPI actually route it through Iran as well. If this turns out to be the case, it will force the U.S. to accept that the stabilization of Pakistan and Afghanistan requires a rapprochement with Iran. Since demand for gas in South Asia continues to skyrocket, the U.S. should encourage both projects and actively link their implementation to its conflict resolution strategy for the region. Détente with Iran need not wait for a nuclear breakthrough.
Furthermore, depending on the route of the pipeline, Afghanistan could earn as much as $100 million per year from transit fees of pipelines, providing a necessary boost for Afghanistan’s perpetually aid-dependent government.
These pipelines will aid, not hinder, America’s efforts to provide economic relief to Pakistan as well. Even with the fairly high prices for gas Iran offers to Pakistan, IPI could save the country between $652 million and $1.17 billion annually, depending on the price of oil. This is approximately the same amount as the Kerry-Lugar legislation would deliver in non-military aid each year to Pakistan. According to government reports, Pakistan currently has an energy shortfall of between 3000 and 4000 megawatts (MW), while India’s shortfall is estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000 MW. For this reason, the development of energy projects were a focus of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to Islamabad – however, the talks reportedly ignored the regional context of this issue.
Finally, given concerns about climate change, natural gas pipelines offer donors an opportunity to limit the output of carbon emissions. Natural gas is likely to be the cleanest and most cost-effective fuel to meet Pakistan and India’s energy shortfall. Apart from its use in power plants, natural gas is also being used in the transportation sector. The significance of compressed natural gas (CNG) in India was highlighted as early as 1998, when the Supreme Court ruled that all commercial vehicles in New Delhi should switch to natural gas by 2001 due to pollution concerns from diesel and petrol engines. Pakistan already has more than a million cars on CNG and ranks third in global CNG use after Brazil and Argentina. What’s more, while oil is still largely transported across the globe by a fleet of more than 38,000 pollution-causing marine tankers, 93% of the world’s gas continues to be supplied through pipelines.
Natural gas development offers a unique opportunity to tackle strategic, diplomatic, and environmental goals at the same time. Even in the world’s most turbulent region, there is a possibility for renewed trade along what ancient merchants knew as the Silk Road.
If we genuinely want to stabilize this crisis zone without a heavy American footprint, new energy-based Silk Roads are the solution.
Foreign Policy, BY SALEEM H. ALI, PARAG KHANNA
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Shale Gas Blasts Open World Energy Market
A stretch of coastline on the Texas-Louisiana border provides a startling glimpse of Europe’s energy future. There, where Lake Sabine empties into the Gulf of Mexico, a giant port was completed last year. Built at a cost of $1.5 billion (£900m), it was meant to be a vital new part of America’s energy infrastructure.
Giant tankers from places such as Qatar and Sakhalin island in Russia’s far east were meant to dock there to inject their cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) straight into the national pipeline network.
The Sabine Pass terminal was meant to take about one ship a day but since it opened for business 18 months ago only 10 ships have come in.
“This big shiny new terminal was one of the ones built as the answer to declining US gas production and increasing demand,” said Steve Johnson president of Waterborne Energy, a Texas energy consultancy. “Now it’s in mothballs.”
It is much the same story at America’s eight other LNG import terminals. They are running at only 10% of capacity.
“We have had so much new production come on stream that all of a sudden the role of these terminals has changed dramatically,” said Johnson. “They are getting the world’s leftovers.”
The reason is shale gas — a new and abundant source of natural gas, trapped in rock formations. Oil companies have known about it for decades but always dismissed it because it was too expensive and difficult to extract. In the past few years new technologies that pump water underground to fracture the rock and free the gas have been perfected. The breakthrough has opened a new frontier for the energy industry and turned long-held assumptions about the world’s dwindling supplies on their head.
Suddenly, America is awash with gas. Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, said it had created a “a revolution in the gas fields of North America”. In a report this summer, the US potential gas committee increased its estimates of American reserves by a third. The Department of Energy now predicts that shale gas could meet half America’s demand within two decades and turn the country into a net exporter.
The gas price has reacted accordingly, crashing by 60% in the past year, severing the long-standing link with the oil price.
The revolution in America has set off activity elsewhere. In August Conoco Phillips signed a deal to explore 1m acres in Poland. Shell has bought licences in Sweden, and Exxon Mobil has large holdings in Germany and Poland. France recently launched a licensing round. Other projects are under way in Argentina, Australia, China and India.
Paul Wheeler, managing director at the Jefferies International investment bank, said: “There is a landgrab going on in Europe. It will change the game if the big oil companies crack the geological code of unconventional gas in Europe. The resulting gas production would make Europe more self sufficient and put the brakes on Russian gas becoming a more potent instrument of political influence.”
Gazprom, the Russian provider of a quarter of Europe’s gas, has been dismissive of shale gas. It has a lot to lose if Europe finds it is sitting on vast reserves. Yet it emerged last month that the company is considering buying an American producer of shale gas, partly to see if it can apply the technology at home.
In Europe it is still early days. Nikos Tsafos of PFC Energy, a consultancy, said: “Unconventional gas has transformed the American market. Europe is at a much earlier stage. There is no doubt there is a big resource base there and everyone is excited about it. But we are not yet seeing the corresponding activity on the ground to make it happen.”
It is not a question of simply transplanting the expertise built up in America to Europe. For one, the geology of mountainous central and eastern Europe is far different to the plains in Texas and Pennsylvania and the Rocky Mountains, where there have been big gas finds.
Also, it took many years and a huge number of companies to finally crack the production problems. “There were 30 or 40 players in America who made some extraordinary technological gains. It’s not clear whether the environment is right for that to occur in Europe,” said Tsafos. “These projects require huge amounts of infrastructure: pipelines, rigs, service companies. It will take some time to build that up.”
Population density is also a factor. Drilling into shale is a large, invasive operation and Europe does not have as much wide open space as North America.
The shale is cracked by rigs that drill down thousands of feet. They are able to turn 90 degrees and continue horizontally to follow gas-rich seams. Once a hole is drilled, explosive charges are inserted and detonated to create a series of openings in pipes laid to keep the well open. A mixture of water and sand is then shot down at high pressure. When it spurts through the openings in the pipes, it shatters the surrounding rock and the gas is released.
The process uses vast quantities of water and American regulators are only now coming to grips with the environmental impact.
The prize, though, is huge. Burning gas produces far lower carbon emissions than oil or coal. For governments struggling to hit pollution targets, that is important. So is security of supply. Countries are scrambling to get new supplies. Companies in Britain have spent billions on new LNG terminals on the Isle of Grain in Kent and at Milford Haven in Wales to make up for the North Sea’s decline. Croatia and Poland are also working on plans to build new port capacity. Construction on the £7 billion Nabucco pipeline from Turkey to Austria — meant to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russia — is set to begin next year.
Opinion remains divided over whether the American experience can be repeated. Researchers at Texas A&M University estimate world reserves could increase ninefold. Nick Grealy, an energy consultant who runs the No Hot Air website, said shale gas was a “millionaire ticket that can be shared by everybody”.
Critics say the prospects are far less promising. They argue that shale reserves rapidly peter out once they are accessed and that the variable nature of rock formations makes it difficult to always use the same technology, making it expensive and unpredictable.
Yet for some the debate is over. Charif Souki, the man behind the Sabine Pass terminal, has seen at first hand what shale gas means. He bet the future of the company he leads, Cheniere Energy, on America’s expected need to import gas by ship. Once a stock-market darling, the company has plunged deep into losses and seen 95% of its market value disappear.
At a conference in Europe last month, he offered a warning. He said: “Non-conventional reserves do exist and will be produced, it’s just a question of price.” He couldn’t believe the scepticism about shale gas expressed by energy executives in Europe. “Those are the same speeches I heard in the US,” he said.
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Apopka 1st Central Florida city to convert cars to natural gas
Apopka will soon become the first city in Central Florida — and one of just a handful across the state — to convert some of its vehicles to run on compressed natural gas instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.
The technology is touted as clean, green and cheap, with compressed natural gas typically costing half as much per mile as gasoline. With a $153,000 federal grant, Apopka plans to build its own fueling station and convert about 15 city cars — most of them police vehicles.
The money, which is part of the federal stimulus package, can be used only for helping cities run vehicles with technology that produces little or no pollution.
“It’s a proven technology, and without too much reconfiguring, you could turn a regular car into one that runs on natural gas,” said Stephen Reich, a director at the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The engines operate the same as a regular automobile, but equipment is added to allow the use of compressed natural gas. The fuel has almost none of the carbon emissions associated with air pollution and global climate change, Reich said. And, he said, the conversion makes almost no difference in the vehicle’s power. ”The downside is that you need to find a place to refuel,” he said.
Apopka will build its station at the corner of Highland Avenue and Eighth Street. Mayor John Land said that Apopka is trying to be on the cutting edge of technology that is better for the environment. Apopka, which is converting about a third of its total fleet, was the only Central Florida city to get the natural-gas grant.
“We think that if we start making these changes, in the long run it will inspire others to do the same,” Land said. “Even though it won’t change the world overnight, we hope in the long run we’ll make a difference.”
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Volvo Moves Forward on Natural Gas Engines for 18-Wheelers
* Volvo chooses Westport as tier 1 development supplier
* Westport stock rises as much as 13 pct
* “Meaningful” sales expected in 2011 (Recasts with stock price rise, CEO interview, analyst’s comment)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Shares in Westport Innovations Inc (WPT.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (WPRT.O:Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) rose 13 percent on Monday after the developer of natural gas-fired engines said it had signed a supply deal with Volvo AB (VOLVb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s second biggest truck manufacturer.
Volvo has chosen Westport as a tier 1 development supplier of heavy-duty natural gas engines. As such, the small Canadian-based company will design and develop a clean-burning natural gas engine for the Swedish automaker’s fleet of large trucks.
“Volvo power trains doesn’t have other natural gas engines … It is a big deal for the industry that the biggest (diesel truckmakers) are announcing that they are getting into natural gas,” Westport Chief Executive David Demers told Reuters in an interview.
The market for natural-gas trucks is still tiny but tighter vehicle emission regulations worldwide, high oil prices and government incentives to go green are encouraging both fleet manufacturers and operators to look at alternatives.
“We view this development as a strong positive for the (Westport) stock,” said Ian Tharp, an analyst at Dundee Securities in Toronto.
Westport, which doesn’t actually make engines but rather chooses and puts together component suppliers to develop them, already sells natural gas engines in the United States with its partner Cummins Inc (CMI.N: Quote,Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s largest independent manufacturer of diesel engines.
Under the Volvo agreement, Westport and Volvo will share program development expenses related to the heavy-duty system. Westport will have to satisfy certain unspecified milestones for the program to continue.
The new natural gas engines are expected to meet future European vehicle emission standards, Westport said.
Asked how long development and design could take, Demers said it takes around two to three years to “get an engine out of the door”.
Westport has sold about 200 of its heavy-duty natural gas engines since 2007, Tharp said. “Meaningful volumes” of more than 1,000 are only expected to materialize in 2011, he said.
Westport’s shares rose as high as C$13.16 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Monday. They closed just off their highs at C$13, a gain of C$1.37 or 12 percent.
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America’s Natural Gas Revolution – Wall Street Journal
The biggest energy innovation of the decade is natural gas—more specifically what is called “unconventional” natural gas. Some call it a revolution.
Yet the natural gas revolution has unfolded with no great fanfare, no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up. In 1990, unconventional gas—from shales, coal-bed methane and so-called “tight” formations—was about 10% of total U.S. production. Today it is around 40%, and growing fast, with shale gas by far the biggest part.
The potential of this “shale gale” only really became clear around 2007. In Washington, D.C., the discovery has come later—only in the last few months. Yet it is already changing the national energy dialogue and overall energy outlook in the U.S.—and could change the global natural gas balance.
From the time of the California energy crisis at the beginning of this decade, it appeared that the U.S. was headed for an extended period of tight supplies, even shortages, of natural gas.
While gas has many favorable attributes—as a clean, relatively low-carbon fuel—abundance did not appear to be one of them. Prices had gone up, but increased drilling failed to bring forth additional supplies. The U.S., it seemed, was destined to become much more integrated into the global gas market, with increasing imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
But a few companies were trying to solve a perennial problem: how to liberate shale gas—the plentiful natural gas supplies locked away in the impermeable shale. The experimental lab was a sprawling area called the Barnett Shale in the environs of Fort Worth, Texas.
The companies were experimenting with two technologies. One was horizontal drilling. Instead of merely drilling straight down into the resource, horizontal wells go sideways after a certain depth, opening up a much larger area of the resource-bearing formation.
The other technology is known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fraccing.” Here, the producer injects a mixture of water and sand at high pressure to create multiple fractures throughout the rock, liberating the trapped gas to flow into the well.
The critical but little-recognized breakthrough was early in this decade—finding a way to meld together these two increasingly complex technologies to finally crack the shale rock, and thus crack the code for a major new resource. It was not a single eureka moment, but rather the result of incremental experimentation and technical skill. The success freed the gas to flow in greater volumes and at a much lower unit cost than previously thought possible.
In the last few years, the revolution has spread into other shale plays, from Louisiana and Arkansas to Pennsylvania and New York State, and British Columbia as well.
The supply impact has been dramatic. In the lower 48, states thought to be in decline as a natural gas source, production surged an astonishing 15% from the beginning of 2007 to mid-2008. This increase is more than most other countries produce in total.
Equally dramatic is the effect on U.S. reserves. Proven reserves have risen to 245 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2008 from 177 Tcf in 2000, despite having produced nearly 165 Tcf during those years. The recent increase in estimated U.S. gas reserves by the Potential Gas Committee, representing both academic and industry experts, is in itself equivalent to more than half of the total proved reserves of Qatar, the new LNG powerhouse. With more drilling experience, U.S. estimates are likely to rise dramatically in the next few years. At current levels of demand, the U.S. has about 90 years of proven and potential supply—a number that is bound to go up as more and more shale gas is found.
To have the resource base suddenly expand by this much is a game changer. But what is getting changed?
It transforms the debate over generating electricity. The U.S. electric power industry faces very big questions about fuel choice and what kind of new generating capacity to build. In the face of new climate regulations, the increased availability of gas will likely lead to more natural gas consumption in electric power because of gas’s relatively lower CO2 emissions. Natural gas power plants can also be built more quickly than coal-fired plants.
Some areas like Pennsylvania and New York, traditionally importers of the bulk of their energy from elsewhere, will instead become energy producers. It could also mean that more buses and truck fleets will be converted to natural gas. Energy-intensive manufacturing companies, which have been moving overseas in search of cheaper energy in order to remain globally competitive, may now stay home.
But these industrial users and the utilities with their long investment horizons—both of which have been whipsawed by recurrent cycles of shortage and surplus in natural gas over several decades—are inherently skeptical and will require further confirmation of a sustained shale gale before committing.
More abundant gas will have another, not so well recognized effect—facilitating renewable development. Sources like wind and solar are “intermittent.” When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, something has to pick up the slack, and that something is likely to be natural-gas fired electric generation. This need will become more acute as the mandates for renewable electric power grow.
So far only one serious obstacle to development of shale resources across the U.S. has appeared—water. The most visible concern is the fear in some quarters that hydrocarbons or chemicals used in fraccing might flow into aquifers that supply drinking water. However, in most instances, the gas-bearing and water-bearing layers are widely separated by thousands of vertical feet, as well as by rock, with the gas being much deeper.
Therefore, the hydraulic fracturing of gas shales is unlikely to contaminate drinking water. The risks of contamination from surface handling of wastes, common to all industrial processes, requires continued care. While fraccing uses a good deal of water, it is actually less water-intensive than many other types of energy production.
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Water solutions reached in Haynesville Shale play
About a year ago, Haynesville Shale Expo speaker Gary Hanson talked about the problems ahead for water resource management in wake of the explosion of the shale play.
On Friday, Hanson talked about solutions that have been reached. “There’s been a paradigm shift in the past few months in how the industry looks at water and it started here.”
Hanson’s PowerPoint presentation — one of four during afternoon breakout sessions in the second annual expo — drew a moderate crowd. The director of the LSU-Shreveport Red River Watershed Management Institute shared how important water is to the shale development.
Up to 7 million gallons can be used to stimulate the deep natural gas deposit, and that demand put the industry into competition with residential and commercial users. “A water market has developed in the Haynesville Shale,” Hanson said.
But the push was on to make sure the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, a poorly defined underground water source that serves most of northwest Louisiana, was not the companies’ only option. During the past year, lakes, rivers and private ponds have emerged as primary sources, with private pond building becoming a popular alternative. Recycled and treated wastewater are emerging as other potential sources.
And permits are being issued on a regular basis by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to companies that choose to pump water out of the Red River. Hanson complimented the oil and gas companies for taking heed of the water worries and implementing programs focused on surface water sources.
Chesapeake Energy, for example, uses 95 percent surface water in its drilling operations, and Petrohawk has utilized 100 percent surface water with its rigs this year.
“They made it a strict policy,” he said of Petrohawk. Exco Resources and EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) also were singled out. Some companies pressured each other to “do the right thing.”
“The companies are working well with us and they are working well together. “» We needed that credibility with the public,” Hanson said.
by Vickie Wellborn, Shreveport Times
Read more Haynesville stories from the Shreveport Times
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“Ring of Fire” Discusses the Pros of Natural Gas
This is site and podcast collect an amazing array of stories from the left side of the spectrum. “Ring of Fire” is one of the podcasts this site aggregates from. The 11th chapter of this podcast is a “Ring of Fire” discussion about the climate bill, big coal and why natural gas will save us all. Check it out.
\”Best of the Left\”, Act 11, Argument for Natural Gas
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Haynesville Shale has protected Northwest Louisiana from recession
Northwest Louisiana residents repeatedly have heard over the past year or so how fortunate this region is to have the Haynesville Shale and its financial fortunes act as somewhat of a buffer against the national recession.
Energy specialist Loren C. Scott echoed that Friday during a luncheon speech before 560 attendees of the second annual Haynesville Shale Expo inside the Shreveport Convention Center. The first to release a comprehensive evaluation of the oil and gas industry’s impact on the region, Scott put the shale into perspective, first through a detailed look at the national economic picture.
“This has been a stinker,” he said of the recession that started in January 2008. “But there’s every indication we are out of it now, and we’re starting to grow again.”
Historically, Scott said, when there’s a national recession, “you people get creamed. “» You always get hit harder than the national economy.”
But that wasn’t the case this time. Jobless totals are hovering at slightly less than 1 percent, compared to the more than 10 percent on the national average.
Natural gas drilling has kept the rig count up here, as opposed to the nation, and new companies and pipeline projects are pumping revenue into individuals’ pocketbooks and state and local government coffers.
For example, in 2008, when the shale was just a “baby,” more than $4.5 billion in new revenue was generated by seven of 17 oil and gas companies involved in the early shale exploration. Of that, about $3.1 billion was in lease payments. Tax receipts amounted to $153.3 million and more than 32,000 jobs were created.
This corner of the state has other good things going for it, Scott said, such as the strengthening of the mission at Barksdale Air Force Base, the expansion and introduction of new businesses associated with the oil and gas industry and an influx of state and federal highway dollars on major road projects.
But challenges for this area remain. Notable job losses were felt in Logansport and Springhill with the closure of the Georgia-Pacific plants, and Beaird Industries shut down and the site has yet to re-open under new ownership. Casino revenue also has dropped.
The future of General Motors’ Shreveport facility also looms as a concern. “That’s a pretty big hit for a community of this size to take on.”
And there could be national implications that could slow further development of the booming oil and gas business, he said. Stepping off into the political scene, Scott said anti-job growth coming out of the Obama administration threatens progress. And he also took a swipe at proposed national health care legislation.
“It’s all about economics. Go back to your economics.”
Just the introduction earlier this year of Obama’s $33 million tax on the extraction industry was enough to slow it down, Scott said. Natural gas prices, already at an all-time low price, stalled out and rig counts nosedived.
“The Haynesville Shale is what kept you going,” he said.
Read more Haynesville stories from the Shreveport Times
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A Dramatic Mini-Series About a Shale Gas Boom?
[This comes by way of Campbell Hutchinson, poobah of Haynesville Play , check out his great site]
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Pulizer Prize-winning author Richard Russo is making his first foray into TV series with an untitled HBO drama about the Catskills Gas Rush.
Russo (“Empire Falls,” “Nobody’s Fool”) will also serve as an executive producer on the project, which is based on a 2008 article in New York Magazine by David France.
The Catskills are believed to hold the largest reservoir of natural gas ever discovered in America. Geologists have known about it for more than a century but it had been largely ignored because the location made it prohibitively expensive to exploit. But the recent discovery of a drilling technique suited for Catskills’ terrain and the fact that gas prices have tripled over the past decade suddenly made the region red hot.
However, to make it feasible for exploitation, gas companies have to secure vast swaths of land near where third-generation diary farmers live next door to weekenders, mostly New Yorkers who have bought second homes in the Catskills in droves.
“What the article is about is the kind of class war that was shaping up between dairy farmers in some of the poorest land in the North East and a lot of actors, artists, filmmakers and writers who have bought second homes there,” Russo said.
“These poor farmers now are leasing mineral rights to gas companies, looking to become overnight millionaires as a way to save their farms and their way of life, while the weekenders are very well educated and environmentally conscious and are not anxious to see drilling, chemicals in the air and access roads cutting through their neighborhoods.”
What attracted Russo to the subject matter was its context.
“I liked the metaphor of what lies beneath our feet,” he said. “What happens to people’s lives when they find out there is something they didn’t know about and how it would benefit their lives and how it tends to expose what goes on beneath the surface in their own lives.”
The HBO project will begin four years in the past and would allow history to play out, Russo said. Gas companies are still waiting approval from New York State for drilling to start.
The show reunites the author with HBO where he adapted his “Empire Falls” as a miniseries in 2005. In addition to writing the pilot script for the gas drama, Russo is busy promoting his latest novel, “That Old Cape Magic.”
(Editing by DGoodman at Reuters)
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