Last week, the Wealth Daily office received this email from Jane Birkenstock (I’m not joking about the name):
Please forward to your CEO.
Why don’t you promote an industry that doesn’t destroy the environment and doesn’t pollute the water supply?
Promoting the fracking industry identifies your company as a member of the 1% that will do anything to make a profit including destroying the water supply that everyone needs just to survive.
Sincerely,
One of the 99%
You think she pollutes her lungs doing mad bong hits?
Ah, yes, one person’s pollution is another’s nirvana.
But let’s get down to brass tacks: Had Ms. Birkenstock done a little digging, she would’ve discovered that a few years ago, this company published a book titled, Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks.
That’s an inconvenient fact.
And extreme environmentalists never let facts get in the way of their agenda — or their happiness.
Ever notice how these people are always pissed off, pessimistic, and depressed?
There’s so much oppression in the world!
But here’s some good news for Ms. Birkenstock…
Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said drinking water is safe to consume in a small Pennsylvania town that has attracted national attention after residents complained about hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.
The EPA recently completed testing water at 61 homes in Dimock, Pennsylvania, in the Marcellus Shale region, where residents have complained since 2009 of cloudy, foul-smelling water.
Dimock became popular after amateur film-maker Josh Fox released the documentary Gasland, which highlights footage of residents who were able to light their tap water on fire just by holding a flame next to a running spigot.
It should be noted that methane has been found seeping to the surface in parts of the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania since the late 1790s.
According to historical records of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania:
Early reports from those who settled the area indicate that plenty of methane (in addition to brine) found its way up to the surface as well — so much methane, in fact, that records suggest the water was flammable dating as far back as 1795.
Susquehanna County isn’t the only place in the Marcellus where this has been occurring for centuries…
William Hart is credited with drilling the world’s first natural gas well in 1825 in Fredonia, New York. (Fredonia is about a four-hour drive northwest from Susquehanna County.)
Drilling a well 27 feet deep into shallow shale rock, Hart struck gas.
How did he know where to drill?
He listened to the Indians, who identified a place known as “Burning Creek” where methane had been bubbling up and igniting for decades.
I doubt any of this will change the minds of the anti-fracking crowd. They’re true believers.
As I’ve said many times before, if God Himself came down from the heavens and declared fracking safe — and that it would be done in the future using fairy dust, unicorns and rainbows — the environmentalists would accuse Him of being bought off by the fossil fuel industry.
But we need not wait for divine intervention…
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Next to Pennsylvania is Ohio, where the Utica Shale exists.
Last week it was announced that a new and safer method of fracking will be tested on two wells in the Utica region in Ohio by the end of this month.
If this method works in the Utica, it will be a game-changer.
You see, a recent report by state geologists released some mind-blowing estimates on the Utica Shale in the Buckeye State.
If we are to assume that the Utica Shale play in Ohio holds one-third of its volume in natural gas and two-thirds of its volume in crude oil, recovering just 1.2% of these hydrocarbons would result in 3.75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.31 billion barrels of oil.
If we increase the recoverable rate up to 5%, the estimated recovery jumps to 15.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 5.5 billion barrels of oil.
So we could be looking at another Bakken-type play — that’s how significant this is.
And it all hinges on one tiny company’s revolutionary new fracking technology.
In fact, many in the industry are calling it everything from a “magic frack” to the “key to America’s energy independence.”
I’m calling it “Fracking 2.0.”
And deservedly so. This fracking company’s drilling technology is so superior to current drilling methods, it produces between 50 and 80 percent more oil and gas than a conventionally-fracked well.
It produces so much more oil and gas from wells, in fact, that many of North America’s major oil and gas companies have partnered with this company for rights to use their drilling technology.
This is the future of shale drilling — period.
That’s why this company’s drilling method received the Technological Innovator of the Year Award for 2011.
I’ll have a full report on this emerging situation in the coming days. Be on the lookout for it.
The original bull on America,
Brian Hicks
Check us out on YouTube!Brian is a founding member and President of Angel Publishing. He writes about general investment strategies for Wealth Daily and Energy & Capital. For more on Brian, take a look at his editor’s page.
