Albuquerque Business First ran a column poo-pooing the notion that the boom in natural gas production could lead to more jobs and economic growth nationwide.
This may indeed be the case for now and it is certainly true that manufacturing doesn’t employ as many people as it did in the past (largely due to technological innovation), but it doesn’t follow that the natural gas boom is lacking in impact or that it could not have a major impact on the economies of both New Mexico and America as a whole.
For starters, Japan is desperate to buy our cheap, clean natural gas (especially from New Mexico). Unfortunately, regulatory issues in Washington (and indecision on the part of the Obama Administration) have delayed investments needed to truly unleash the natural gas boom.
The point is that sometimes economic changes take a long time to flower especially when government is involved. Maybe the boom won’t be in domestic manufacturing, but will come about in the form of more drilling and exports. If so, that is the free market at work. Oh, and this boom will be especially beneficial to New Mexicans in terms of both jobs created and economic growth.
The natural gas boom has just started. The US will be a major exporter of LNG, if the federal government can stop being an obstructionist.
I have noticed government vehicles driving around New Mexico proudly sporting stickers stating that “this vehicle is powered by 90% ethanol” or words to that effect. That seems silly to me since New Mexico is not a corn growing state but does have abundant supplies of natural gas. Why are we subsidizing corn states like Iowa rather than using our abundant local resources? If we are not going to use gasoline why don’t we use natural gas; a cheaper more available resource? I recently bought a new vehicle which has a chart stating that this vehicle will travel 490 miles on a tank of gasoline but only 370 miles on a tank of ethanol; that about a 20% lose of efficiency for a product that we have to subsidize to compete with gasoline. None of this makes since to me.