Michael Giberson
From the Globe and Mail:
Last year, the continental U.S. saw its natural gas production grow by 10 per cent to 55 billion cubic feet a day, powered by huge production increases from shale gas plays like the Marcellus, Haynesville in Louisiana and Texas’s Barnett field. In Canada, gas production actually declined by about 4 per cent or 700 million cubic feet a day to 15.7 billion cubic feet a day.
The leading indicator for gas production is the drill rig count – how many rigs are in the field at any given moment exploring for and developing new fields. “Drilling activity on both sides of the border is collapsing faster than a bank loaded with toxic debt,” [BMO Nesbitt Burns analyst Randy] Ollenberger said.
Of course that is partly because there are fewer promises of bailouts being dangled in front of the oil and gas exploration business.
(As the article also notes, “After touching $15 for 1,000 cubic feet in the spring of 2008, gas prices have fallen to $4.20 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and many analysts believe they have not yet bottomed out.”)
So much for energy independence.
http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINN0454844120090304
“US Treasury secretary attacks oil, gas tax breaks” by Tom Doggett on Thu Mar 5, 2009:
WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) – U.S. oil and natural gas producing companies should not receive federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks because their businesses contribute to global warming, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress on Wednesday.
It was one of the sharpest attacks yet on the oil and gas industry by a top Obama administration official, reinforcing the White House stance that new U.S. energy policy will focus on promoting renewable energy sources like wind and solar power and rely less on traditional fossil fuels like oil as America tackles climate change.
“We don’t believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem). We don’t think that’s good economic policy and we think changing those incentives is good for the country,” Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing on the White House’s proposed budget for the 2010 spending year.