King Coal Was a Merry Ole Soul, But No Longer: Natural Gas Now Is the #1 U.S. Electricity Generator

The June 24th Energy Information Agency (EIA) Electricity Monthly Update shows that in April Natural Gas was the number one U.S. source of electricity generated as measured by megawatts of output.  It moved ahead of coals in the standings by generating 31.46% of all electricity generated.

The technological revolution in the oil and gas industry has notched up another new first.  

Over the last few years, the U.S. exported more petroleum products than it imported for the first time in 52 years.  Then it became the world's largest petroleum exporter and finally the world's largest oil producer.

The technological revolution.  

Often the amazing technological revolution that has transformed both America's and the world's energy picture is referred to as the Shale Gas Revolution.  This is increasingly a misnomer.  The same innovations have been applied to the Mississippian Limestone formation here in Kansas and the Permian Basin in Texas, to mention but two examples.  The former has been producing oil since 1915, but the revolution has revitalized recovery from a field thought to be largely played out.  The Permian Basis was first developed in the 1930s.  The new techniques are recovering oil as deep as 10,000 feet from strata of various rock types.  The revolution combines computer technology that I can only describe as three dimensional GPS with engineering that allows horizontal drilling a mile or more sideways miles beneath the surface of the earth and with hydraulic fracturing, a technique first used here in Kansas 67 years ago.  Yet few say "high tech" when they talk about about oil and gas.

This could only have happened here in the U.S. where individuals own the mineral rights, where the rule of law still generally prevails, where independent petroleum companies flourish, and where immigration was once encouraged.

A sobering thought:  

If the various immigration laws of the last ninety five years had prevailed before 1920, the revolution's father, George Mitchell, would have been born in bankrupt Greece not Galveston and would not have studied geology at Texas A&M. The Economist put it well: "Few businesspeople have done as much to change the world as George Mitchell." 

What might not have been!

Will This Movie on Fracing Light Your Fire?

Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer have directed a new documentary about hydraulic fracturing that gives a very different picture from that portrayed in the Acadamy Award nominated documentary, "Gasland."  McElhinney is a bit of a fiery journalist, perhaps because of the attempt to muzzle the Irish pair (see below.)  Telling an Irishman or Irishwoman to shut up is hazardous.  Here are some things she has to say about what they found in researching "FrackNation: A Journalist's Search for the Fracking Truth:"




She is certainly right that the first hydraulic fracturing was done here in Kansas in 1947.  It was in the Hugoton field in southwest Kansas.  I doubt that that conventional well was in a shale formation since the field is "mostly Permian limestone and dolomite."

Video journalist Phelim McAleer questioned Josh Fox, the producer of the anti-hydraulic fracturing documentary "Gasland," about why he failed to disclose that methane has been present in Colorado water for decades and thus flammable at the tap:



In the New York Post, McAleer wrote last spring, "One of the most dramatic images in 'Gasland' is footage of a resident lighting his tap water with flames shooting out of the faucet.

"As a journalist, I wanted to learn more, so I went to a Q&A with Gasland director Josh Fox. As I questioned him, Fox eventually admitted that he knew people could light their tap water in these areas decades before fracking came on the scene.

"But he did not include the fact in his documentary because, he said, 'It was not relevant.'"

He then went on to tell of Fox's attempts to get the above video removed from YouTube and other internet sites.

Unlike "Gasland" and "Promised Land," Matt Damon's anti-fracing movie FrackNation is not financed by big Hollywood money.   It took a much more democratic route to finance itself.  Christopher Toto tells us "FrackNation, like many independent films of late, went the Kickstarter route to help bring its story to the masses."

According to the director's statement, "'FrackNation' was funded through the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter. The filmmakers raised $212,265 from 3,305 backers on Kickstarter on April 6, 2012. It was one of the most successful documentary campaigns in the history of Kickstarter."

John R. Hays, Jr., an eminent Texas attorney with an extensive practice in the oil and gas industry, tells me that the proper way to shorten "hydraulic fracturing" is "fracing" not "fracking," given industry practice.  I am afraid the industry is losing the spelling war: it is not the geologists and the petroleum engineers who are winning.