Unconventional oil and gas production added the equivalent of $1,200 to real household disposable income on in 2012. Since the poor spend relatively more on energy, this is clearly one of the best anti-poverty program going.
The industry raised GDP by by $283 billion last year and was responsible for $74 billion in federal and state tax payments.
What a great program. It not only pays its own way but also pumps revenue into the treasury, more than $200 million a day. Revenue is expected to rise to $138 billion a year by 2025.
Fracking has been as close to a gift from God as I have ever seen. Imagine the trouble we would be in w/o it. It has been the single most important stimulus after what the Fed has been doing. And it keeps on coming, year after year.
I am not a big believer in one or two things “saving” the economy. But clearly the unexpected bonus from fracking helped lift us from recession and will do a lot to get the economy finally back on track. Revenue from fracking can pay for a lot of mistakes, such as Solyndra.
Let’s just not let them screw it up.
On a related item, I was learning from a UC Santa Barbara study that energy exploration has REDUCED natural oil seepage into the ocean by about half. An article starts, “Next time you step on a glob of tar on a beach in Santa Barbara County, you can thank the oil companies that it isn’t a bigger glob.”