Last July when I launched the Pickens Plan to get America to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, one of the pillars was to rely on home-grown energy. It makes no sense for us as a country to be shipping billions of dollars overseas when we have such abundant resources that could be tapped, including wind, solar, and, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal points out, natural gas.
"U.S. Gas Fields Go From Bust to Boom" read the headline of the front-page story, and the focus was the "big shift in the nation's energy landscape." We now have the technological know-how to tap into trillions of cubic feet of natural gas trapped in rock formations called shales. I've been a geologist for over 50 years, and I promise you this is a game changer. Wildcatters have been drilling in the Haynesville Shale since the 1870s. Trouble was no one could figure out how to extract the natural gas. Just three years ago natural-gas production was thought to be permanently declining in the U.S.
But in North Texas -- my backyard -- we found the answer. Last year, by itself, the Barnett Shale produced four billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, and it's one of 20 shales in America. As the Journal points out, "the U.S. is now swimming in natural gas." One study estimates that we have enough natural gas to satisfy current demand for the next century. So why are we still importing foreign oil?
I've been on The View, The Tonight Show, Larry King Live, and just about every other show on TV pitching my plan. I've backed it up by spending millions to buy television ads to spread the word. If you've ever heard me talking about natural gas, then you'll know I always say that it's cheap, it's clean, and it's ours. The Journal makes the same point:
"The discoveries have spurred energy experts and policy makers to start looking to natural gas in their pursuit of a wide range of goals: easing the impact of energy-price spikes, reducing dependence on foreign oil, lowering 'greenhouse gas' emissions and speeding the transition to renewable fuels."
I don't care how you put it. Just a few years ago energy experts were writing natural gas off. Now, it's almost as if divine intervention has occurred. We're swimming in it. That's why H.R. 1835, the NAT GAS Act, enjoys such strong bipartisan support with 10 Republicans and 20 Democrats writing and cosponsoring this important piece of legislation.
One last point: 98 percent of the natural gas used in the U.S. is produced right here in North America. Why is that important? Just ask Europe. This January in the dead of winter, Russia slashed natural gas shipments to the Ukraine and Western Europe and completely cut off the Balkans and Turkey over a contract dispute. How did the European Union respond? By telling the Russians that their actions were "completely unacceptable." Hell of a response. You think OPEC wouldn't cut off our crude over a major disagreement? Hugo Chavez would do that in a heartbeat.
Remember, establishing a sustainable energy policy that relies on domestic resources such as natural gas is not just an economic issue. First and foremost, it's a security issue.
Technology has allowed America to access more natural gas- and yes, now we are swimming in it.
Will natural gas turn the energy debate on its head in the U.S.? Come visit our blog and share your opinion. www.naturalgasforamerica.com
C. Keddy
http://www.naturalgasforamerica.com
Wall Street Journal, 2/29/09: "Such industry heavyweights as Newfield Exploration Co., Devon Energy Corp. and Chesapeake Energy Corp. will announce Wednesday the formation of the American Natural Gas Alliance to push broadly for more use of gas in power generation, transportation and other fields....Policy makers have not embraced wide use of natural gas, in part because U.S. production was declining until the recent discoveries.... Producers and their investors are increasingly concerned that the market will remain oversupplied even when the economy recovers.
“'In order to promote greater use of natural gas, *you’ve got to convince people it’s abundant*,' said Newfield Chairman and Chief Executive David Trice, who will serve as chairman of the new coalition."
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123552499920765485.html
Scratch the environmental or national security veneer ever so slightly, and what's underneath is mass public persuasion.
"Swimming in natural gas" is marketing talk, part of marketing strategy.
These are days in which we need to be citizens, not consumers.
OK. 98 % of Nat Gas is ours? I don't think so. It's the oil companies and they have been choking
us for decades and will continue to do so as long as our government also remains oil controlled. Americans have no say or control of their energy future. Lemmings to the sea marching in lock-step to the secret Cheney Energy Task force scheme. But then again they've been having their way with us by controlling the flow ever the first wooden oil pipe line was constructed from Pennsylvania to N.Y. courtesy of J.D. Rockefeller. Remember Ludlow, Colorado.
Plus the plants are very easily sited and can be put wherever there's a gas line (and can even run off methane from landfills-reducing greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere), eliminating the need to add transmission lines in grid-constrained cities.
ilovemountains.org
From an environmental perspective, any of our coal usage that we can switch to gas is a big improvement. Not as good as wind, waves, and solar, but worth doing in many cases.
From a geopolitical perspective the best option is to develop the infrastructure to switch to gas quickly and seamlessly, but leave it mostly unused except when oil supplies are interrupted. If we make it our main energy source, rather than developing renewables and nuclear, we will soon run out of the conveniently-located reserves.
Lets use the natural gas, wind and solar to replace the coal plants, and run our cars on electricity.
Maybe use some natural gas for trucking, but bio-diesel could also work well. Same for airplanes.
As for using NatGas to generate electricity for electric cars, that's much less efficient. The great thing about using CNG fuel to directly power cars and trucks is that you bypass the inefficiency of converting into heat, then into electrical power, transmitting the electrical power, charging up the batteries, and then converting the stored electrical power back into mechanical power.
It's also safer than liquid fuels, as I've described in a post below. As for airplanes and jets, natural gas is an excellent fuel there as well; unfortunately though, we've neglected to invest in CNG jets, and the Russians have a good lead on us in that technology. BioDiesel (or BioKerosene) is rather a lousy option compared to almost all others. Even if better feedstocks (i.e., algae) than we currently use can be commercialized, by all accounts, it's much more efficient to use BioGas. I believe I read one German study which puts BioGas at nearly 5x more efficient than liquid biofuels, so if biofuels are the path we're going to take, we may as well start developing the infrastructure for a CNG economy.
You're also dead-on in your prescriptions: we should immediately begin replacing liquid transport fuels with CNG, and for electrical power, deploying wind and solar where they're viable. The relatively small economic potential for wind and solar should not be exaggerated, however. In the intermediate term, uranium- and thorium-fueled nuclear power is the only way to go. Longer-term, fusion is most definitely the only option even worth discussing.
I truly believe that if we have a couple of decades of hard core development of solar and wind power it will be cheap enough and efficient enough to be used more widely.
The idea that ‘It’s too expensive’ is BS. Everything is expensive when it is new or not widespread.
"natural" gas is a Green house gas and produces green house gasses, including carbon dioxide, when it is combusted.
The process of extraction requires addatives to the H2O injected into the shale. The addatives are all concealed from the EPA by laws which protect companies from divulging food recipes to the general public. But, this is a recipe for death and disaster on a massive scale. Because, all of the water for our neighborhood comes from the ground.
The tank pressure required when natural gas is used in automobiles is tremendous.
What Pikkens is proposing is a...
WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN EVERY TANK
The best case is when you use the a portion overseas oil money saved from this conversion to fuel new energy technology research.
Put panels on your roof, and if you have land, a windmill on your property. When electric cars come down in price (watch Tesla's next move), get one.
Do you think after the billions of dollars are put toward this natural gas utopia that they would simply cut and run on their investments once a viable green solution exists?? I think not. (But ,I do think their are viable alternatives today.)
Today, I live off of the grid with my solar panels and once I am able to purchase an electric car I don't need pickens natural gas vehicles.
So , the whole idea is once electric cars become more common is for people that own their own houses to purchase solar panels to charge their electric cars.Sorry pickens, I don't need your natural gas for my car.
75-85% of Americans drive less then 40 miles a day. It seems that most auto companies over the next 2 years are coming out with plugin hybrids that would allow you to for the first 40 miles to use primarily electric from the batteries.
This would dramatically reduce out dependance of foreign oil a lot faster then pickens plan.
In the process of electric cars being put on the road their needs to be wind and solar powerplants built to replace the fossil fuels that will feed your cars for the people that cannot afford their own solar panels.
Again, chasing after natural gas is a ruse.
I can see where an environmentalist may have some issues with him, but keep the fight clean. The man deserves that much.
Investors will find a way to profit from any energy policy we choose to pursue, such is the nature of capitalism. Mentioning the potential profit motives of someone like Pickens is a complete red herring.
Right on there sanity!!
By the by, Christian conservatives (oxymoron anyone?) please quit claiming my lord is one of you. Joseph Caiaphas considered Jesus a radical pinko liberal --and he was there.