In March of last year, The New York Times declared that “the great American drilling boom is over.”
Here’s the key sentence from the Times’ analysis of the U.S. energy industry: “Lower prices are bringing to an end an ambitious effort to squeeze more oil from aging fields and to tap new sources of natural gas.”
Now, let’s fast-forward to last week, when a New Orleans-based energy company announced it had drilled 28,000 feet beneath the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and discovered one of the largest shallow-water fields in recent decades. Experts believe the field, which is located in an area that was thought to have been tapped out, contains more than 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Despite reports of its demise, the dead dinosaur business may hold the key to the nation’s energy future for the next 30 to 40 years.
That’s good news for the central Gulf Coast. Mobile, Pascagoula, New Orleans and other cities in the region stand to benefit economically from the deepwater exploration. New drilling will spur the expansion of natural gas facilites and other energy-related industries, creating jobs and capital investment.
So, thanks to the ingenuity of the often-derided energy industry, the “drilling boom” isn’t over — not by a long shot.
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