Natural gas from fracking shale is critical to Florida's economic future

Natural gas obtained through the fracking process from shale deep underground is economical, environmentally safe and essential to the future of this country - and is especially important to Florida as it tries to reduce air pollution by shifting away from coal.

Engineering reports and other sources indicate that despite criticism by environmentalists, abundant sources of natural gas from shale via fracking offer a significant opportunity to convert many older, coal-fired plants - or to build new power plants using natural gas.

In western Florida, for instance, about half of the electricity generated by Tampa-based TECO Energy comes from coal, while the Florida operation of Progress Energy generates about a third of its electricity from coal.

Yet President Obama and new federal regulations are inhibiting the nation's potential to take advantage of potentially huge new supplies of natural gas via fracking.

On one hand, Obama called for utilizing natural gas from fracking in last month’s State of the Union speech.

That's brought him under sharp criticism from his core group of environmentalists who fear that fracking's use of chemicals could impact acquifers and pollute drinking supplies - even though most fracking is done thousands of feet below most water tables.

Yet more stringent air-quality regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency are forcing utilities to shut down coal-fired plants sooner than planned. And for companies that have made the investment to clean up their coal plants and comply with the EPA regulations, the cost has been billions of dollars and will certainly increase electric bills.

“The regulation, in combination with other EPA rules, would be among the most expensive ever imposed by the agency on coal-fueled power plants, dramatically increasing electricity rates for American families and businesses, and causing substantial job losses,” the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity wrote last year about the changes.

The speed of the changes are being challenged by attorneys generals from several states, including Florida. They fear that Obama's massive and costly new air pollution rules will dramatically increase electric bills before the utility industry is ready to shift away from coal toward natural gas. Florida consumers already pay the most per kilowatt hour than consumers in any state in the Southeast.

Final changes in the Obama pollutions rules were announced in December and already have forced the premature closings of several coal fired plants in the Midwest and elsewhere.

And based on the Obama Administration’s adversarial approach to energy and other industries, some analysts wonder if Obama will alter his current support for fracking if he were re-elected in November. An argument certainly can be made for numerous false and misleading statements made by Obama and his administration.

As the electric utility industry uses more natural gas, it's taking advantage of a substantial drop in prices because of potential access to huge new supplies that would be available through the fracking process.

The steep decline in natural gas prices represents an opportunity for relatively inexpensive, stable and CLEAN energy that will make this country less dependent on unstable foreign sources for decades.

According to data and market forcasts from IHS Global Insight and other sources:

The price of natural gas dropped from about $13/MMBTU in mid 2008 to its present price, approximately $4/MMBTU.
Shale gas in 2008 comprised about 11 percent of all natural gas production. But by 2010, shale gas jumped to 27 percent and by 2015, it will be 43 percent.
By 2035 shale is expected to amount to 60 percent of all natural gas production.
Black & Veatch predicts that natural gas prices will remain stable until at least 2015.

World energy markets are held hostage not only be supply and transport issues, but because it continues to be dangerous world - a condition that critics say is exacerbated by the Obama Administration's ineffectual foreign policy.

This is especially true as Iran continues to assert itself in the Mideast and a now-quiet Russia waits for another moment to wield its massive natural gas reserves as a hammer to threaten European energy security.

Another threat to world energy markets and international shipping could come from a growing, modern Communist Chinese navy even as our own country reduces its navy to levels not seen since the World War ONE era.

Even now, the Chinese have been threatening its neighbors with unreasonable claims to offshore oil and gas reserves as far south as the southern part of Vietnam to areas encroaching on what should reasonably belong to Taiwan, Korea and even Japan.

And despite false claims made by the Obama campaign in 2008, Chinese and Latin American countries unfriendly to the United States are beginning to develop offshore natural gas and petroleum reserves in deep water north of Cuba, which has the right via treaty to drill offshore as close as 50 miles to Florida.

In the United States, tens of billions of dollars of private investment is pouring into the drilling and infrastructure development necessary to exploit natural gas from shale via fracking. If the current administration remains in office into 2016, all of this is threatened, at best, with stagnation.

At worst, an industry critical to the future of the United States could be gutted so much as to be inconsequential.

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