Drill

clipped from ibdeditorials.com Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada. Geologist Gary Lash of State University New York at Fredonia and colleague Terry Engelder of Penn State estimate that Marcellus holds 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. About 20 trillion cubic feet are produced in the U.S. annually. The Potential Gas Committee of the Colorado School of Mines reported in June that the U.S. has 1,836 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas locked up in formations like Marcellus, the Bakken formation centered in North Dakota and the Green River Formation in the Rocky Mountain West. Drill, Patterson, drill.