The U.S. economy is booming, and natural gas development has played a large part of it. On the twentieth anniversary of hydraulic fracturing last week, Forbes highlighted it as a world-changing event:
“Instantly, the national energy need to import expensive natural gas completely inverted, and we now stand ready to become the leading exporter of natural gas in the world.”
Forbes went on to discuss how natural gas has led to countless environmental benefits over the past two decades:
“Domestically, it also became the primary mechanism for electricity generation in the country, overhauling our country’s relationship with coal in less than a decade. This has had tremendous impact within our energy industry (causing coal to be a much less competitive commodity), but also environmentally, with the use of cleaner natural gas over coal leading to a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions. Thoughtful environmentalists have had to appreciate with awe and wonder what natural gas has meant to greenhouse emissions, which have been reduced nearly 15% since the fracking revolution began, all the while increasing the underlying energy production many times over.”
Beyond the environmental benefits, Forbes also discussed the geopolitical advantages brought about by this technology:
“The obvious geopolitical impact is that the U.S. now sits in a position of leverage over the OPEC cartel, becoming crude oil’s actual marginal producer, and able to buffer against the supply/demand controls of Saudi Arabia.”
