It's not just Rocky Mountain towns like Rifle, Colorado that are experiencing a gas and oil boom like few can remember. The Marcellus Shale, stretching from New York to Ohio to West Virginia, has long been known to hold lots of natural gas. Now, with better recovery technology and high gas prices, the rush to extract eastern gas is on. In Pennsylvania, the price of mineral rights leases went from $300 an acre in February to $2100 in April, according to a New York Times report. 20 companies are investing over $700 million to develop the resource.
It's an 19th/early 20th century redux, when Pennsylvania was the seat of coal and oil development, long before the west became the nation's energy basket. In this sense, the Marcellus Shale is a sprawling symbol of how little we've progressed in our energy diet, how, despite new, renewable technologies and the imperative of climate change, we're still quick to return to a pre-modern energy system when the law of supply and demand allows.
Time for a 21st century carbon tax!
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