Today Gifford Briggs, Vice-President of LOGA (Louisiana Oil and Gas Association) joined 'Mornings With Ken and Bernie' to discuss the benefits of natural gas production and exports.

We've recently heard more concerns about the production and exporting of natural gas and asked Briggs to address those concerns.  According to Briggs,

Many of these concerns can be directly attributed to the so-called documentary 'Gas Land' which was a complete farce.  There was a lot of misinformation about hydraulic fracturing and how natural gas is produced.  If we look to our own EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) which lets be honest has not been the biggest friend of the oil and gas industry.  Study after study concludes there is no environmental contamination that has come from hydraulic fracturing...that message doesn't get across to the public.

Briggs continued by saying,

Hydraulic fracturing has been around since 1961.  The horizontal drilling portion is the newer technology.  90 to 95% of all the wells being drilled use hydraulic fracturing.  Due to the shale revolution more and more wells are being drilled horizontally everyday because it's allowing us to produce resources we knew were there but were uneconomical until the new technology.

Speaking of new technologies we asked Briggs to tell us about new facilities being constructed in Southwest Louisiana that will be exporting natural gas.  Briggs said,

The Chenier facility for example is an $11 billion facility that will employ over a thousand people and the good news is,  it's running ahead of schedule.  An African company, SaSol will be turning natural gas into a liquid gasoline fuel.  The industrial revolution that's happening in South Louisiana because of natural gas prices in the next few years totals about $60 billion.

According to Briggs there will be a tremendous construction boom in South Louisiana as more jobs are created and more local workers will have to trained to operate the facilities once completed.

Briggs had much more to say about natural gas, hydraulic fracturing and their economic impact and hear all of his comments in this interview:

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