The natural gas that's being pulled out of the ground now through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods was deposited in the Utica and Marcellus rock formations roughly 300 million years ago, and as Chuck McClaugherty, Ph.D., professor of biology at the University of Mount Union, pointed out during a recent interview, there has been no more deposited since.
"We've already removed all the resources from under the ground that were easy to get at. There are no more wells being drilled that gush oil the way they used to. That's why we've had to come up with more sophisticated ways to get at the resources. My concern is that we will deplete them too quickly," said McClaugherty. "We've made excellent use of our resources and have used them to create our modern society, but we've used in a couple of centuries what it took hundreds of thousands of years to create."
McClaugherty pointed out there is a finite time frame we have to work within while these resources are still available, and his hope is that we use the time well by finding better ways to utilize the resources so they last longer, and by getting alternative energy sources in place for the future.
"With the new technology we have, and the increased volume of natural gas that's on the market, the price has come down. But if you look at the entire life of the operation, as those products start to be depleted, the price will go up again. I just hope that a large percentage of the people that are enjoying this period of extraction will think long-term and take their wealth and invest it in ways that will help humanity three generations out," said McClaugherty, adding, with a sad smile, he knows that's a lot to ask.
McClaugherty justified his position by explaining he is old enough to have learned we need to strike a balance between doing well now and doing well in the future. "We have an opportunity now to do both," he said. And always being the optimist, he added, "A lot of people over the years have done both. A lot of what we enjoy today is because of people who have had long-term vision. ... It makes you feel good when you see something good from a previous generation that had the vision to leave that behind. Something that will last."
McClaugherty believes we are all smart enough to know about the "boom and bust" theory that has been spelled out repeatedly throughout history. Examples he gave included the U.S. gold rush, the invention of the locomotive, the industrial revolution in America, and now, the new oil and gas rush here in this part of the country.
"We have to take this, what I would almost have to call a windfall, and use it to create increased job opportunities. A lot of other good things will come along with this too. But what can we do to make the wealth last? We have to come up with visions for our local communities when this income stream starts to dry up. Find ways we can fix our communities, and I think that will need to be beyond natural resources."
McClaugherty feels the U.S. didn't make the transition from the industrial revolution very well because it kept on "beating a dead horse" and didn't get out of the business soon enough. He believes we need to act now, while there is still enough money to do it, so we can build a place people will want to call home. A place where kids won't want to leave as soon as they graduate. How can we do that? By thinking ahead and trying new things, according to McClaugherty.
McClaugherty summed his thoughts up by saying, "We will have these resources only for a certain period of time. So, we need to have alternative energy in place. I'd like my grandkids not to look back one day and tell me, 'You guys really didn't learn anything from history at all, did you?'"
A member of the Mount Union faculty since 1988, McClaugherty is a member of Alliance's Green Task Force, the University of Mount Union's Sustainability Committee and the Environmental Education Council of Ohio.
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