By Holman W. Jenkins Jr.,
Wall Street Journal
With turmoil in the Middle East comes the inevitable spike in oil prices, topping $90 this week. Look for energy security to make one of its recurrent runs to the top of the national agenda. This time, though, we should listen to the shale gas revolution that has put an unexpected energy bonanza at our feet in places like New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Any energy forecast a few years ago that failed to anticipate the shale boom and associated technological breakthroughs now mostly looks like a wasted effort. And that's the point.
Shale gas came painlessly into the world, though on paper the number of rich and powerful interests it upset would be nearly endless. Every owner of an oil well or coal mine or conventional gas well. Investors in the U.S. and Europe and Canada who spent billions building terminals to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Investors in a long-planned pipeline from Alaska to the upper Midwest. Investors in the massive Russian Shtokman field, tipped for LNG exports to the U.S.
Oil has joined the Past… NG is the Future!
Jack H. Barnes, Confessions of a Macro Contrarian,
Business Insider
The natural gas cartel, a dream of Russia’s just a few years ago, is dead. It died when a natural gas revolution broke out and Gazprom lost. Energy importing nations around the world are evaluating their own geology, currently, to see if they have shale reserves that can be tapped. Nations like Argentina, Germany, Poland, France, and Sweden are looking into their national shale reserves.
The shale gas revolution is changing the world we live in, and the power structures of the past. It is also quickly changing the politics of future energy relationships. Nations that had to be nice to an exporter, due to energy supplies, will be freed of their need for discretion.
Shale gas is quite simply changing the whole energy paradigm in real time. The unlocking of source rock, has altered the future history of mankind. The world has discovered and unlocked its newest true world changing source of stored energy.
Science Accounts Hit Hard by Planned House Budget Cuts
by Jeffrey Mervis,
Science Insider
Today, House of Representatives Republicans unveiled a long-awaited plan to reduce federal spending this year that includes double-digit cuts in the panels that fund most of civilian basic research. It is $74 billion lower than President Barack Obama's 2011 request, submitted 1 year ago and never enacted, and is divided between $56 billion in civilian spending and $18 billion for security expenditures, including $9 billion from the military.
The spending plan comes in the form of an allocation to each of the 12 appropriations subcommittees that dole out the $3.4 trillion federal budget. The panel that controls the budgets of the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Commerce would get 16% less money than in 2010 and 11% less than President Obama has requested for the current, 2011 fiscal year. The panel that oversees the Department of Energy would receive 10% less than in 2010 and 15% less than the president's request. The panel that oversees the National Institutes of Health and the Education Department would receive 8% less than the president's request and 4% less than in 2010. However, the plan does not specify spending levels for individual agencies, which are currently being funded at 2010 levels in a continuing resolution (CR) that expires on 4 March.
These so-called 302b allocations, announced by the House Appropriations Committee, are expected to be voted on by the full House the week of 14 February. The goal is final passage by Congress before the CR expires. Not coincidentally, Obama submits his 2012 budget request to Congress on 14 February.
