FRACKING: IMPOVERISHING THE SAUDIS AND RUSSIANS AND IRANIANS WHILE PUTTING MONEY IN AMERICAN POCKETS. Shale Is Making It Cheaper to Heat Homes This Winter.

The shale boom has a lot to do with these winter savings, as new supplies of fracked gas have helped push spot natural gas prices here in the U.S. well below $3 per mmBtu (read: cheap). But the shale boom has also done its part in pushing down global oil prices by adding to a global glut of crude, and that’s in turn had a knock-on effect in depressing petroleum-based fuels like heating oil.

These savings aren’t negligible, either. Natural gas-heated homes will save on average more than $100 this winter, and households that use heating oil will spend (again, on average) $760 less. These savings will be especially welcome in poorer households, whose heating bills might comprise a bigger slice of their monthly budget. Expensive energy can be seen as a kind of regressive tax, in that it disproportionately burdens the poor. If that’s the case, then it stands to reason that this mild winter’s low heating bills are nothing less than progressive.

Americans might wonder how the recent price plunges in global natural gas and oil markets might affect them here at home, but already we’re seeing two concrete pieces of evidence in cheaper gasoline and smaller heating bills.

Fracking: Helping Middle America at the expense of dictators. No wonder lefties hate it.