The method for extraction is called hydraulic fracturing (“fracking” for short), and as we told you last month, it appears to be a transformative technological development. In 2000, shale gas accounted for only 1 percent of American natural gas supplies; that figure has shot to 30 percent and continues to rise.
To date, the American public seems largely uninterested in the breakthrough, as blowback from environmentalists has framed the issue along partisan lines. Thankfully, this may be changing, as open-minded thinkers are catching on. Last week New York Times columnist David Brooks impartially explained the significance of the breakthrough. The U.S., he writes, “seems to possess a 100-year supply of natural gas, which is the cleanest of the fossil fuels,” and it “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.”