Why Joe Biden’s “pause” in developing new export capacity may be a bait and switch, The Dispatch reports.
On 18 March 1937, at three o’clock in the afternoon, a workshop teacher at New London School in Rusk County, Texas – a thriving little community in the oil fields two hours east of Dallas – turned on a belt sander and tore the roof off the impressive new steel and concrete school.
Students in the lower grades were let go early, but about 500 students and 40 teachers from grades 5-12 were still there. They, too, were hardly spared. There were only 20 minutes into the school day when a spark from the grinder blew their world away. Then seventh-grader Margaret Nichols, in an interview 70 years later, recalls:
I had a headache that day, and I had gone out to my uncle’s car to lie down in the backseat. I guess I was asleep when a boulder came through the front windshield. All of a sudden I was covered with dust.
That headache may have saved her life. Nearly 300 students and teachers died that day, and it remains the worst school disaster in the history of the States.
Young Margaret was lucky to be where she was at the time of the explosion, but there was nothing unusual about her headaches. School children had been suffering from them for months, but no one had seen a pattern that indicated a more serious problem.
The problem was that the school district, in order to save the $300 a month it paid during the winter months for natural gas heating, had forced its plumbers to tap into a “wet gas” line from a nearby oil field. This waste product, emitted when pumping liquid oil and often burning off at the top of wells in spectacular plumes, had no value to the oil companies, was abundant and free, although it was far less reliable than refined methane. But the plumbers failed to properly secure the pipelines, and the school was built on a slope, so that a chamber 253 feet long and 6 feet wide was under the building to make it level. When the gas ignited, the whole place burst into flames instantly, according to The Dispatch.
Walter Cronkite, a young reporter in the Dallas bureau of the United Press, got on the phone as soon as the news reached the city a few minutes later. Decades later, Cronkite, who later covered the campaign against the Nazis in the North African desert and the Battle of the Bulge, recalled that day in East Texas this way:
I did nothing in my studies nor in my life to prepare me for a story of the magnitude of that New London tragedy, nor has any story since that awful day equaled it.
The whole world sincerely sympathised with the disaster, including Adolf Hitler, who sent a telegram of condolences. There was much anger, but no one was held responsible. Nevertheless, the legacy of the disaster remains with us to this day. The putrid sulphur smell we associate with natural gas leaks came from the addition of the foul-smelling thiol gases that became the standard in part because of this tragedy.
For most of the 20th century, this is how Americans viewed natural gas. It was a good and clean fuel for heating homes in warm and temperate climates. At the same time, however, it was too scarce and dangerous to be a reliable source of energy for most. It was used to make chemicals, but always remained a speciality product. Electricity was a more reliable option, and it was mostly produced by burning coal to produce steam that turned turbines.
In 1950, natural gas accounted for almost none of the electricity generated in the United States. Coal was the largest source, and hydroelectric plants completed the picture. But over the next two decades, one of the most ambitious construction projects we’ve ever seen began crisscrossing the country with pipelines. There are now nearly 3 million miles of pipelines under our feet, The Dispatch reports.
Between 1950 and 1970, US natural gas production nearly quadrupled, but still mostly for industrial and home heating purposes. And that in part made gas, though cleaner than coal, unattractive as an energy source, even as environmentalists began sounding the alarm. Each winter brought rising prices, and in harsh winters like the one we had, price shocks. However, there was another revolution ahead.
Gas producers had long pushed the boundaries of exploration, using new materials and technologies to penetrate deeper than ever imagined offshore and onshore. But vast reserves of gas could not be extracted because they were trapped in the earth’s strata or mixed with silt.
Since the late 1800s, gas miners had used “shooting,” a process in which explosives released the gas, but it was dangerous work. In 1921, however, Oklahoma resident Erle Halliburton received a patent for his method of “cementing” wells. What began as a way to control mud and muck in gas fields eventually evolved into what we now know as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” By pushing heavy fluid into the ground, drillers could isolate and extract gas from deep, massive, previously unusable reserves far from the traditional oil fields around the Gulf of Mexico. Appalachia and the Great Plains became the new Saudi Arabia, according to The Dispatch.
After remaining flat for nearly 40 years, natural gas production has skyrocketed, doubling between 2006 and 2020. However, is this a good thing?
Gas producers realised that new markets had to be opened up to prevent a glut and price collapse. The most obvious target was the power companies, which at the time were still dominated by coal. Power companies were desperately looking for an alternative, pressurised by carbon emissions. In addition, a way out was being sought by a new Democratic president who came into office with a promise to fight global warming, opposing the Texas oilman he replaced. Higher energy prices during the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression were not a viable option, but the new abundance of natural gas offered an alternative.
Cheap and abundant natural gas allowed Barack Obama to fight coal, cut emissions, and keep energy prices for consumers from skyrocketing to the stratosphere. By 2014, the natural gas revolution had helped Obama get elected to a second term and turned the United States into a net energy exporter. After claiming no “energy independence” a generation ago, America has done that and more.
The problem in the Democratic coalition was that what Obama called “bridge fuel” was going nowhere except to increase gas production and consumption. Environmentalists, who were already furious at the side effects of fracking that had become an excuse for the left, warned that cheap carbon-based energy was the problem, not the solution. A consensus grew in the climate activist community that natural gas, was the next prime target for action, delaying the pain of the transition to renewables, The Dispatch reports.
Industry, too, has kept pace with the changes. In response to the production boom, new advances in transportation and storage have emerged, including new terminals to process and ship liquefied natural gas for export. From 2014 to today, US gas exports have nearly quintupled. And environmentalists have identified an emerging threat in the US energy industry.
And so we come to President Joe Biden and his decision to “pause” the development of new natural gas export capacity. It’s a logical campaign play for a candidate who has serious problems on the left, especially with younger voters who tend to be more interested in environmental issues than their older counterparts. But it also creates some problems – short, medium and long term.
One of the countries that the United States bypassed to become the world leader in natural gas exports was Russia. This is especially important because the United States and Russia share the same major market for natural gas: Europe. Access to more US gas has reduced Vladimir Putin’s leverage over our European allies, allowing them to take a tougher stance on various key geopolitical issues. Reduced supplies will also increase the price Russia can get for the energy it already produces, according to The Dispatch.
But there are more than just external reasons. Pennsylvania is the second largest producer of natural gas in the US, behind only Texas. The Keystone State accounts for nearly a quarter of all production. Some 260,00 Pennsylvanians work in the energy industry, many in the natural gas industry, and many in what Biden calls “dignity jobs.”
All of this indicates that the “pause” may turn out to be election bait and switch. Right now, it’s good politics, as Biden needs a strong showing in the primary election, which begins this week in South Carolina, to be seen to be fighting gas. But closer to November, the president may decide to follow the example of Pennsylvania’s popular Democratic governor and go for an agreement with the industry. Biden would like to enthuse younger voters, but he can’t hold on to power without his native Pennsylvania.
