Last night Obama delivered his 2012 State of the Union address.
It sounded unusually similar to what I’ve been writing in Wealth Daily and Energy and Capital…
Create millions of jobs by opening up our vast oil and gas shale formations.
On November 18, 2011, I outlined my plan to get Americans back to work.
In my “Roadmap to Prosperity” article, I wrote:
It’s very simple: Open up our resource-rich oil and gas shale regions to exploration and production.
In the Bakken, 18,000 jobs are unfilled. This figure is only going to grow.
You see, right now there are more than 3,000 wells that have been or are being drilled in North Dakota.
By the end of the decade, 50,000 wells will be drilled.
I’ve owned and visited oil and gas drills in the past. Typically, 10 to 12 men are needed to run the drill.
Do the math…
North Dakota will be an employment bonanza.
Drill, Baby, Drill
But the Bakken is just one of many shale formations we can tap into.
A recent report by Bloomberg quotes New York Commissioner of Environmental Conservation Joe Martens that the Marcellus could add more than 13,000 jobs — direct and indirect to his state.
“That’s our most conservative estimate. The higher estimate is nearly 54,000 jobs,” Martens said.
And it’s not only right-leaning media outlets that are promoting the benefits of our shale resource. Last Friday, the liberal New York Times had this to say:
The U.S. now seems to possess a 100-year supply of natural gas, which is the cleanest of the fossil fuels. This cleaner, cheaper energy source is already replacing dirtier coal-fired plants. It could serve as the ideal bridge, Amy Jaffe of Rice University says, until renewable sources like wind and solar mature.
Already shale gas has produced more than half a million new jobs, not only in traditional areas like Texas but also in economically wounded places like western Pennsylvania and, soon, Ohio. If current trends continue, there are hundreds of thousands of new jobs to come.
Stay on top of the hottest investment ideas before they hit Wall Street. Sign up for the Wealth Daily newsletter below. You’ll also get our free report, “A Great Year Ahead for Natural Gas: A 2017 Outlook” by our expert research team.
During his State of the Union, Obama directly addressed natural gas shale drilling, stating that his administration “will take every possible action” to safely expand shale gas drilling efforts.
Obama went on, “The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy.”
In his speech, the president emphasized the economic impacts of drilling: “We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years. Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade.”
And remember, this is just natural gas development…
Oil shale production in the United States is also booming and creating jobs.
Two days ago, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said it expects oil shale production to increase 20% in ten years.
To put that into perspective, America produces 5.5 million barrels per day. By 2020, the EIA expects that number to jump to 6.7 million barrels a day — an increase of 1.2 million barrels.
That 1.2-million-barrel increase alone is nearly more than the combined oil production of Australia and India.
That’s how significant this is.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: This is greatest investment event of the century.
The original bull on America,
Brian Hicks
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.