Wilbur Ross sat down for an interview with Butlook Business. He had some interesting comments on shale gas. Like this writer (but coming from someone far smarter), Wilbur Ross believes that shale gas could solve many issues/problems facing the US economy; unemployment, energy independence (duh), deficit etc.
Wilbur Ross commented:
What then is the solution?
The reason I supported Romney is that we need a rollback of the regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has essentially destroyed the coal industry in America. We are the only country that has a huge natural resource destroyed by government action. It’s crazy. Now the environmentalists are trying to destroy shale gas and shale oil. Both these things can transform this economy.
Because of shale oil we have already gone from being 50% dependent on outside imported oil to only 17% dependent and there is much more to come. The US could very soon be self sufficient in oil, not due to any government action but due to entrepreneurs finding shale oil, and we are starting to become an exporter of petroleum products. It is illegal to export crude oil from the US but not illegal to export petroleum products. So, for example the Gulf Coast ports used to be big importers and they would ship the oil up to the refineries in the mid-west and in the Texas panhandle. There was a big pipeline called the Seaway pipeline. On May 19, that pipeline was reversed. It is now bringing shale oil down from the Bakken field and Eagle Ford field to the refineries in the Gulf Coast. That is a tremendous change. If this trend continues it will remove the single biggest source of our balance of payments deficit, which is hydro carbon imports. It is hundreds of billions of dollars a year. That itself would add a percentage point or two to the whole economy.
Then we have shale gas. We are becoming an exporter of shale gas. We have so far the most shale gas in the world. That fuels the chemicals industry. Dow Chemical is now starting to build chemical plants here instead of other countries. The shale industry could add a couple of percentage points to the GDP. If it is just left on its own, it doesn’t take one penny of Federal funding to do it. All it takes is for the Federal government to not screw it up.
The full interview can be found Business Outlook India
