People are happy at the pump these days in Ohio. Right now gasoline costs well below $3.00 per gallon. Heating with natural gas has gotten cheaper over the past few years. Both of these trends have to do with fracking. University of Dayton Professor Bob Brecha has some thoughts about the long-term costs and benefits of going after increasingly difficult fossil fuel deposits. We are living in confusing times. A few years ago, oil and natural gas prices were spiking, imports of oil kept increasing, and the US was trying to figure out how to get more natural gas from Canada and Mexico. Now the US is about to overtake Saudi Arabia in oil production, Russia in gas production, and that we should get ready for a switch to natural gas use in trucking, electricity generation and more. The question is, “How long can this last?” By now everyone knows that the magic word is fracking, or hydraulic fracturing. Conventional crude oil and gas that we were used to extracting was formed under great heat
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