It’s never to end my friends. The Obama administration has taken another swipe at our domestic fossil fuel production, this time in Ohio by cancelling already scheduled mineral lease auctions in the Ohio Utica Shale which were to be December 7, 2011 [Note: the author of the article states this was 2012, however I suspected this was a typo. After talking with him on the phone he did verify the actual date of the lease was 2011].
The USDA made the decision, and Ann Carey of Wayne National Forest tells us they took 3000 acres of land off the market:
Carey uses the case of course, that more study needs to be done on hydro-fracking; a process of injecting a cocktail of chemicals and water into shale in order to bring oil and natural gas to the surface. States Carey:
“Based on new information and increased public interest on natural gas exploration, especially deep horizontal drilling, the Forest will soon assemble a team of natural resource specialists to do further analysis,” said Carey. “This group will review the best scientific information available with regard to the surface effects of deep horizontal drilling and lateral hydraulic fracturing.”
Ohio’s Governor Kasich back in September during a jobs summit made it clear that Ohio should be involved in this type of drilling because of the thousands of jobs it will create and the huge of amount of dollars pumped into the state. However, Jack Shaner a spokesman for the Ohio Environmental Council had this to say:
“We could turn the Ohio Valley into Ozone Alley,” Shaner said, explaining that the emissions would come directly from the hydrocarbon themselves.
Give me a break, Mr. Shaner. Hydro-fracking puts little or no ozone into the air. Just another way of keeping the U.S. under the boot of foreign oil. The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program released a study done in September of this year citing the benefits below from drilling for oil and natural gas in Ohio’s Utica Shale:
- over 200,000 new jobs
- overall state wage and income boost: $12 billion
- royalty payments of up to $1.6 billion which would exceed the royalties take in in the last decade
- total tax revenue through 2015: a staggering $479 billion
“The data clearly demonstrates the transformative force oil and gas exploration and development could have on the state’s economy,” said Rhonda Reda, executive director of OOGEEP. “Ohio has been given great geological gifts and the economic potential is tremendous.”
Hydro-fracking has been under fire in several states. ACORN’s offshoot Working Families Party takes credit for getting former NY Governor Paterson to put a moratorium on horizontal fracking, which now-Governor Cuomo has extended.
Congress recently made a *second request* of Dept. of the Interior’s Chair Ken Salazar to testify on new hydro-fracking regulations. And if one thinks this most recent assault on our domestic fuel production is bad, may I remind you Obama and the Dept. of Interior placed a drill ban on most offshore areas until 2017 just 2 weeks ago.
Several days ago Ohio Rep. Bob Gibbs (R) of Lakeville railed at the Obama administration’s plans at these new regulations stating “the EPA should think carefully before instituting new rules.”
Methinks Rep. Gibbs, you are gonna have to be a little more forceful here, than just “think carefully”…….
Crossposted at Unified Patriots
