President Obama’s rosy picture of natural gas as a miracle fuel does not stand up to the facts. Not only is there no scientific proof that fracking can be done safely, but the Department of Energy’s just-revised gas estimates contradict President Obama’s promises about natural gas as a pathway to energy independence; there is simply not enough gas to expand our dependence on the fuel in a meaningful way. The new DOE report slashed U.S. domestic gas estimates by 42 percent, from 827 tcf to just 482 tcf—less than 20 years worth of gas at current rates of consumption. If we continue to increase our use of gas for electricity, manufacturing and transportation, we’ll have only a few years’ worth of gas.
