In today’s Los Angeles Times, there were side-by-side articles (that I can’t link to because the L.A. Times site makes them impossible to find, so I went elsewhere) that were noteworthy. One talks about how the price of electricity will likely rise, despite all that cheap natural gas the industry loves to frack about.

And the next discusses how a new study on the polluting effects of gas drilling (fracking) is being done by the Department of Energy.

Follow the links. Here’s a tease:

A plunge in the price of natural gas has made it cheaper for utilities to produce electricity. But the savings aren’t translating to lower rates for customers. Instead, U.S. electricity prices are going up.

Electricity prices are forecast to rise slightly this summer. But any increase is noteworthy because natural gas, which is used to produce nearly a third of the country’s power, is 43 percent cheaper than a year ago. A long-term downward trend in power prices could be starting to reverse, analysts say.

“It’s caused us to scratch our heads,” says Tyler Hodge, an analyst at the Energy Department who studies electricity prices.

And:

PITTSBURGH — A new study being done by the Department of Energy may provide some of the first solid answers to a controversial question: Can gas drilling fluids migrate and pose a threat to drinking water?

You already know how we feel about fracking (scroll). When will this country figure out that no matter how cheap gas may be, if the population dies off, there will be nobody around to put money in drillers’ already full pockets?