Hi Gail,

As always, a very thought-provoking post. Once again, we run up against the economics as the primary underlying problem with production. As you point out, government intervention is probably necessary to put a floor under prices to ensure that the gas actually gets produced.

I live in New York and last year took my Permaculture certificate course down in the Catskills, in the heart of the Marcellus play. To expand on the issues around opposition to current hydro-fracking practices in the area, here are a couple of points:

1. Dick Cheney and co. specifically exempted gas producers from applicable sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts
2. Fracking liquids, though clearly toxic, are protected as "trade secrets", so no public body can judge what the potential dangers are
3. Fracking uses A LOT of water- I've seen estimates between 2 and 6 million gallons per well head
4. Questions about where the millions of gallons of water would come from remain unanswered
5. Some of this water stays underground- evidence from similar plays in Colorado and Wyoming show methane and other contaminants moving into groundwater aquifers
6. Most of the water is returned to the surface and usually disposed of at the surface, in open pits, partly lined with plastic
7. The NY DEC has roughly 19 enforcement officers who would need to oversee thousands of wells and disposal sites
8. Governor Paterson ordered the DEC to revisit its ecological impact assessment after it became clear that existing precautions were insufficient
9. The Catskills region contains the headwaters to both the Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay watersheds, fed by Delaware, Chenango and Susquehanna rivers
10. Farther west, but still in the Marcellus, the Allegheny river feeds the Ohio and subsequently the Mississippi

Boone Pickens proposed last year switching the vehicle fleet to NG, while replacing the electricity production with wind. What are your thoughts on what this would do in evening out the fluctuations in the price cycle?