Truth Squad: “Are There Really 100 Years Worth of Natural Gas Beneath the U.S.?”

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Pres­i­dent Obama Addresses The Nation Dur­ing State Of The Union Address

In last night’s State of the Union Address, Pres­i­dent Obama said Amer­ica has about a 100 year sup­ply of untapped nat­ural gas. But how is that cal­cu­lated? Last month Chris Nelder wrote a piece for Slate that breaks it down. Nelder makes the case that there’s a lot more uncer­tainty about how much of that gas can be extracted and used to power our refridger­a­tors. And ques­tions the source of that 100-year figure.

“The claim of a 100-year sup­ply orig­i­nated with a report released in April 2011 by the Poten­tial Gas Com­mit­tee, an orga­ni­za­tion of petro­leum engi­neers and geo­sci­en­tists. Pres­i­dent and Chair­man Larry Gring works with Third Day Energy LLC, a com­pany based in Austin, Texas, that is engaged in acquir­ing and exploit­ing oil and gas prop­er­ties along the Texas Gulf Coast.*Chair­man of the Board Dar­rell Pierce is a vice pres­i­dent of DCP Mid­stream LLC, a natural-gas pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing, and mar­ket­ing com­pany based in Den­ver. The report’s con­trib­u­tors are from the industry-supported Col­orado School of Mines. In short, the Poten­tial Gas Com­mit­tee report is not an impar­tial assess­ment of resources.”

And just this week, the Energy Infor­ma­tion Agency released it’s own updated esti­mates of shale gas reserves. In the “Annual Energy Out­look for 2012,” the EIA reduced their pre­vi­ous esti­mate of poten­tial recov­er­able gas reserves in the U.S., pri­mar­ily because of their over­es­ti­mates within the Mar­cel­lus Shale. The new Mar­cel­lus pro­jec­tions have been cut by two-thirds.

The pres­i­dent had a lot to say about energy pol­icy dur­ing the speech, includ­ing how shale devel­op­ment gives us hope for renewables.

“Our expe­ri­ence with shale gas shows us that the pay­offs on these pub­lic invest­ments don’t always come right away.  Some tech­nolo­gies don’t pan out; some com­pa­nies fail.  But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.  I will not walk away from work­ers like Bryan.  I will not cede the wind or solar or bat­tery indus­try to China or Ger­many because we refuse to make the same com­mit­ment here.  We have sub­si­dized oil com­pa­nies for a cen­tury.  That’s long enough.  It’s time to end the tax­payer give­aways to an indus­try that’s rarely been more prof­itable, and double-down on a clean energy indus­try that’s never been more promis­ing.   Pass clean energy tax cred­its and cre­ate these jobs.”

Click here to read more on Obama’s remarks on off­shore drilling, renew­able energy, nat­ural gas, oil sub­si­dies, and energy efficiency.