Shale Gas for Dummies with Business Degrees

Natural gas wellhead

In the days before Google's Panda update knocked the legs from underneath content farms, self-described freelancers could be found all over the 'net rewording press releases and Encyclopedia Britannica articles in hopes of developing beaucoup bucks in residual income. Their mavens told them that the most money was to be made through the worship of the all-holy SEO and using lots of keywords. Well, Linda J. Baldridge (bizusaonline at InfoBarrel) guzzled that particular Kool-Aid®. To heck with accuracy and the usefulness of any "news" Linda might present, she just wanted to collect a few pennies. That's apparently why she found it necessary to post the ever-fascinating "Tapping Into the Biggest Resource in Natural Gas With Shale Rock"¹ (never mind that "shale rock" is redundant...)

For her scintillating "exposé," Ms Baldridge (sort of) reworded an article from The Montreal Gazette; in the process munging up not only the facts but the English language as well. We'll start with her assaults on English:

"Shale gas has perked interest in Canada, Europe, Asia, and Austrilia [sic], and will expand worldwide energy supply."

"Perked"? Did she mean "piqued"? and WTF is "Austrilia"?

"...the St. Lawrence lowlands, save for the part of Quebec's Utica shale where estimation methodologies could be identified and included..." What on Earth is that excerpt supposed to mean? Did she leave out a few words in her "explanation"? Of course, the most interesting bit of Baldridge Bullshit is Linda's juxtaposition of numbers. She begins by trumpeting the gas reserves estimate: "It was estimated at 1,000 trillion cubic feet in North America itself..."

That's a lot. We don't know how accurate that number is, since we don't know the estimate's methodology or timing. What we found amusing as hell is that Linda then listed eight or nine potential Canadian shale gas plays (making a mockery of the science in the process), and then explained to us that

"Canada is literally sitting on 4,000 cubic feet of natural gas, stated through resources measured from shale gas."

Wow: a whole 4,000 cubic feet? That's a few months' supply for the average home. Either Canada doesn't have jack in natural gas resources or, and this option is WORLDS more likely, Linda J. Baldridge is fully deserving of the Antisocial Network's Dumbass of the Day award we just gave her.

¹ InfoBarrel.com, though still in existence, has deleted all its freelancer-sourced content. If you're still curious about this post, you can find it using the Wayback Machine at archive.org. The URL was  infobarrel.com/Tapping_Into_the_Biggest_Resource_in_Natural_Gas_With_Shale_Rock

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