The Irish Ram
LITTLE GIRL / Ram Tough
Energy boom a windfall for U.S. family income: IHS | Reuters
Robust energy production will increase wages, cut energy and manufacturing costs, and add as much as $2,000 a year to each family's income by 2015, IHS said.
Last year, an average U.S. household earned $1,200 more because of the energy boom as oil and gas companies produced nearly 2 million barrels-per-day of oil, the report said.
The rush has added 2.1 million jobs to the U.S. economy in 2012, both directly and indirectly, and that number is expected to balloon to 3.3 million by 2020, a boon for an economy struggling with stubbornly high unemployment.
"This is a great story for jobs, for the tax base and now for the average household," said John Larson, a vice president of the firm that co-authored the report.
And now for the flip side of that "great" story:
The Gas companies are ruthless, lying, thieving, cutthroats. We have the wreck of the day, the detour of the day, the death of the day, the spill of the day.
The reason for that is using workers from out of state instead of using the local workers they promised to hire. Texans aren't used to hills and turns in Ohio, W.V., and Pa.
Chesapeake Gas and Oil made a deal to buy some of a city's water for fracking, and now the townspeople turn their faucets on and not one drop comes out. The gas company's response was a not so surprising, "tough shit." City officials are now scrambling to try to get some of their water back. They have been unsuccessful.
To keep from paying the people whose property they are destroying, the royalty checks they owe as per the contracts they signed, simply don't get sent for the gas and oil they are stealing!
Instead the homeowners get a bill for removing or "gathering" the gas, or for "misc" charges unnamed, and if any royalty is left after that, the gas company sells the gas for pennies to a subsidiary that they own, pay the landowner from that sale and then keep the profits for themselves when the subsidiary sells to market for the actual value of the gas. The bilking has run into the billions so far. And the only landowner that is getting anywhere in court is the government.
There is no windfall for the families that actually own the gas. It is stolen from us and then sold to you at an inflated price. It is a real nightmare.
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