Fossil fuel production heats up

Oct 24 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Simone Sebastian Houston Chronicle

The United States will produce more energy from fossil fuels than ever before this year, according to a data analysis by a University of Michigan economics professor.

Mark J. Perry lit up the Internet's energy sphere this week with a blog post that crunches numbers pulled from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. His chart shows a surge in the nation's energy production from coal, natural gas and oil since 2009.

Based on data from the first six months of 2012, Perry says the U.S. is on track to produce more than 61 quadrillion British thermal units of fossil fuel energy this year.

A British thermal unit is a measure of energy, the amount needed to heat a pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit.

Further, he says the United States is more energy self-sufficient than at any time in the past two decades.

"America's record high production of fossil fuels this year is a direct result of the advanced technologies (hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling) that have revolutionized drilling for oil and natural gas," Perry wrote, "and have allowed us to tap into previously inaccessible underground oceans of domestic oil and gas trapped inside shale rock far below the earth's surface."

Perry's analysis found that fossil fuel energy stagnated during the 1980s and 1990s, but bounced in 2006.

Meanwhile, consumption of fossil fuel energy has been falling, hitting 79.8 quadrillion Btu last year, its lowest point since 1996.

By comparison, nuclear power remains stagnant, supplying about 8.4 quadrillion Btu for the country annually. In the past few years, renewable energy has surpassed nuclear's portion of the nation's energy supply. Renewables produced more than 9 quadrillion Btu in 2011, growing 40 percent over the previous five years.