When he takes office, President-elect Barack Obama will face numerous difficult challenges as he formulates the nation’s energy policy. He not only has to figure out how to increase domestic energy production while reducing emissions, he has to do so in a way that does not cripple the economy. Ironically, Obama’s harshest critic on the campaign trail may turn out to be his best ally in this effort: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
The North Slope of our 49th state has an abundance of frozen natural gas that could be recovered using existing technology and that could heat 100 million American homes for a decade, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Palin says she would be happy to work with the Obama administration to develop this resource to meet the estimated 20 percent increase in demand for natural gas. Palin has already negotiated a $40 billion, 1,715-mile pipeline to deliver the gas to the lower 48 states. That means Democrats in the White House and Congress will be the lone obstacle between American consumers and 84.5 trillion cubic feet of cheap, clean-burning natural gas that can also buy the nation critical time to develop more renewable energy sources.
Earlier this year, researchers from Penn State and the State University of New York estimated that between 168 and 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – a mother lode five times the size of the Alaska deposit and about 14 times current U.S. production- is trapped in deep shale deposits under parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. Geologists say gas trapped in the Marcellus shale could be recovered using horizontal drilling techniques. Unlike Palin, however, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, seems to be doing everything he can to prevent drilling companies from creating thousands of “green” jobs that Obama says will be a lynchpin of his national energy policy. Rendell is considering a new tax on natural gas and his environmental agency has created so many permitting delays and other regulatory obstacles that some drilling company executives are now seriously reconsidering their plans.
Will Obama take the Palin approach and develop new domestic energy resources, even if it means bucking the special interests in his own party? Or will he take the Rendell way, and throw up so many regulatory roadblocks that the clean-burning natural gas Americans need and want never makes it to their homes and businesses?
