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Comment by jrmg | Hacker News Reader

It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to natural gas customers.

Perhaps it would be prudent to wait for that TIME to pass before beginning extraction? If my excuse for dumping trash in a nearby river was that it takes TIME to come up with a way to dispose of it, and I could be being doing other things meanwhile, I don't think the authorities would look kindly on it.

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No one is history has ever built a pipeline before doing the drilling. It cost money and you need to the drilling to justify the pipeline both economically and regulatory. Your trash analogy does not fit the situation.

Just because historically, we've been a bit stupid, doesn't mean we should continue to be.

I think the analogy fits.

If there is not proven money to support infrastructure, then it won't be built, and to prove it with oil, requires pumping. People who build the infrastructure first in some grand plan fail at a pretty high rate (see the history of the USSR and some MN small towns that thought they would be bigger).

You need to drill before you'll know where/if that pipeline will be needed. Once you have estabilished that the oil is coming from that exact spot, only then you can start pouring in money to connect that spot and not the dozens of others which are dry.

There's an old army joke - the sargeant tells the troops: "You start digging here, here, and there; while I'll go find out which direction is needed".

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