Fracking is our future

A July 24 letter tried, once again, to scare people. In this instance, it was the prophecy of doom from global warming, in spite of the fact that worldwide temperatures were higher in 1100 AD than today. It’s a fact that temperatures have risen more than one degree since 1800, the approximate end of the Little Ice Age. But temperatures have declined over the past dozen years.

The July 24 letter cast an aspersion on all who want to develop America’s energy resources. According to the letter, drilling is dangerous.

The United States has 15 percent of its workforce unemployed or underemployed, a terrible situation for families across America. Energy can power the revitalization of our economy and put people back to work.

We have enough oil in North America to allow us to become energy independent, if the government would get out of the way by opening the outer continental shelf and federal lands to drilling. Our natural gas reserves can last over 100 years, thanks to the development of fracking by private companies. Our newly found supplies of natural gas have already resulted in chemical and fertilizer companies starting to invest in new plants here in the U.S.

Before fracking, these companies were moving to the Mideast with several hundred thousand American jobs lost between 1990 and 2005.

Fracking has also unleashed the development of new oil reserves from shale. For example, the USGS increased its estimate of technically recoverable unconventional oil from the Bakken formation from 151 million barrels in 1995 to around 4 billion barrels in 2008, which is 25 times the 1995 estimate.

Energy can reinvigorate our economy, and create millions of new jobs. We need an administration that believes in the development of our resources.

Donn Dears

Geneva