GoPens;1038967 wrote:We are selling it, which goes to the post I was responding to. We aren't using this gas to wean ourselves off of foreign energy as he said. Foreign companies are coming in and buying it. Chesapeake just made a $2.3 Billion dollar deal with a French company to take our natural gas. We are still going to be as dependent on foreign energy as we were before the Utica shale discovery
The deal is not to "take our natural gas", it is to become a partner in the development of the resource. Chesapeake by itself does not have the ability to completely develop the plays as aggresively as they would like, in fact they are reducing debt levels right now. Bringing in SA allows them to reduce some debt now and at the same time expand on the resource development at a faster pace. SA will get a signficant return on their investment regardless of who the end users of the gas are. There is, at least, over 500 trillion cubic feet of nat gas here --- that is almost an incomprehensible figure. If we play our cards right, this region will benefit in an enormous fashion for decades if not a century or more.