Today’s hydraulic fractionation (fracing) is considered injurious to the environment by its opponents who prefer a state-of-nature and less energy to industrialization and more energy in free market settings. As with so many other technologies, today’s methods are far less invasive and safer than earlier-generation technology. A case in point is the 19th century’s oil-well torpedoing.
In the first years of oil production flowing wells were sometimes hindered by a waxy substance, paraffin, left by crude oil in the well tubing and well bottom. Early efforts to remove residue involved injecting steam, boiling liquids, and air down a well’s tubing. These mildly successful techniques were then replaced by a far superior alternative – oil well torpedoing. [1]
Gun powder explosions in water wells had been documented as early as 1808, and between 1860 and 1864, the technique was in use with oil wells as well. …
July 31st is the birth date of one of the great intellectuals of the freedom philosophy. Milton Friedman (1912–2006) would have been 101 today.
Friedman Legacy Day is being celebrated at 144 events: 90 in 44 states and Washington,D.C., and 54 events in 25 countries abroad. Here in Houston, a “Milton Friedman Rocks” party is tonight.
Friedman was more than a technical economist and early Nobel Laureate in this field; he was a popularizer of the case for free markets. His shorter tracts and biweekly column for Newsweek covered a variety of in-the-news issues, including energy. And he became more libertarian and appreciative of Austrian School economics (market-process economics), the rival to his Chicago School of economics, as time went on.
Friedman’s insight into the distortions from government intervention shortages are timeless.…
“Some might argue that some existing preferences increase energy production and thus, contribute to lower energy prices. Yet many of the preferences at issue have little or no impact on energy production; they simply represent wealth transfers.
Those preferences that do reduce energy production costs simply encourage market actors to produce costly, economically uncompetitive energy. Markets are not made more efficient by producing costly relative to less costly energy.”
Earlier this year, Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute wrote a tax policy missive to the Energy Tax Reform Working Group of the House Ways and Means Committee. This committee, chaired by Kevin Brady (R-Texas), is one of eleven such working groups chaired by Dave Camp (R-MI) and Ranking Member Sandy Levin (D-MI).
Taylor and Van Doren espouse cleaning out the tax code to allow a more neutral tax structure to determine the production and consumption of competing energies.…