Video: ‘Power to Run the Day’

Mark Green
Posted October 21, 2016

Check out our new video below, highlighting the benefits of American energy to individual consumers, businesses and entire sectors of our economy:

Let’s underscore a few of the points in the video.

First, American energy is boosting the economy, helping manufacturers and other businesses create jobs and opportunity. The dependability and affordability of domestic natural gas – as a fuel and a feedstock for producing a number of things we use every day – is a tremendous help for manufacturing operations and other businesses that use a lot of energy. From a brand-new report from President Obama’s National Economic Council:

[F]or the roughly one-fifth of U.S. manufacturing that is energy-intensive, low-cost reliable energy is important to continued competitiveness. U.S.-based manufacturers currently enjoy a competitive advantage from affordable natural gas. Once poised to be a major natural gas importer, the United States is now the number one natural gas producer in the world. The surge in American natural gas production has lowered energy costs for manufacturers and driven job growth, with U.S. natural gas costs one-half that of Europe and one-third that of Asia. Recent analysis estimates that industrial sector consumers of natural gas were better off by about $22 billion between 2007 and 2013 due to abundant, inexpensive shale gas. That is an important part of why companies have announced tens of billions in new capital commitments in energy intensive manufacturing facilities that will come on line in the years ahead.

The great sidebar to the story above is that U.S. economic and energy growth is being accompanied by reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity-generating sector. Historically, emissions increases have occurred during periods of economic and energy growth.

The United States’ market-based approach to energy is writing new history. Increased use of cleaner-burning natural gas – now the No. 1 fuel for power generation – is the primary reason U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions declined last year to their lowest level since 1993. There’s an environmental/climate case to be made for hydraulic fracturing and the natural gas it is producing.

There’s also a consumer case. Energy from fracking put $1,337 in disposable income back in the pockets of U.S. consumers last year, according to a recent report. Americans also are saving at the gasoline pump. AAA says U.S. drivers saved, on average, more than $550 on transportation fuel costs in 2015. Those savings are the market result of increased global crude supply, thanks largely to soaring U.S. production, putting downward pressure on prices.

So, as the video states, U.S. oil and natural gas is more than energy. It’s the power to run the day, every day.