The New York Timesthis past weekend ran a story that Cramer’s been talking up for a while now: horizontal drilling and its potential to tap huge natural-gas reserves.
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One expert cited in the article called horizontal drilling “the biggest energy innovation of the decade.” Of course, regular Mad Money viewers already knew that, but during Monday’s show Cramer reiterated his bullish call on natural gas. It’s a cleaner, more viable bridge fuel that would lessen our dependence on foreign oil, and its adoption would be a great way to create jobs.
So how do investors play it?
Well, in terms of the Marcellus Shale, specifically, which is a huge nat-gas field in Pennsylvania that contains 2.4 quadrillion cubic feet of reserves, Cramer likes Chesapeake Energy .
Chesapeake owns nine of the 52 rigs presently drilling in the Marcellus, as well as 1.45 million net acres there. When you add in the company’s holdings in the Haynesville, Barnett and Fayetteville shales, Chesapeake has 46 trillion cubic feet of unproved reserve potential, Cramer said, “enough to supply the US with most of its energy needs for the next 20 years.”
Regardless of whether Washington finally catches on and begins to favor natural gas the way it has coal, Cramer thinks nat gas is going to $6 or $7 next year.
“Chesapeake is, without a doubt,” he said, “the single best way to play” it.
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