Swimming in Natural Gas

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.

Comments

[NepaLife]

There is nothing green about the process of extracting natural gas from shale and there is nothing green in using it as a so called transition fuel. It is a carbon based resource causing environmental degradation to extract and needing huge amounts of water to process which results in huge amounts of industrial water wastes. There are not enough treatment plants to handle this industrial waste and its going to wind up in the environment in one form or another. The extraction process itself (called hydrofracking) is exempted from the Clean Water Act. Ask yourself, why? Or look into the history of this process in the places where it is is occurring to see how green it really is.
This is another product being sold and promoted by the Oils $ Gas industry for the benefit and profit of the industry. Why not take the millions upon millions being invested into this into some truly green energy development or into rethinking the way we use energy and structure our way of living?

[guidedbyfacts]

Too many people are being led around by empty "clean natural gas" slogans. Look beyond the superficial; find out about the environmental atrocities committed in order to supply you with natural gas. Unconventional natural gas drilling (involving extensive hydraulic fracturing) is bad news. Recent articles in Scientific American, Newsweek, ProPublica and other publications enumerate the toxic legacies of this industry. Support for the natural gas portion of the Pickens Plan will consign numerous communities to serious environmental damage, including the potential for pollution of drinking water sources with chemicals like benzene. Still feel good about natural gas?

[DailyElitist]

No one said it was perfect. No one has said it doesn't have negative environmental impacts. That is not the point.

The comparison is not between Mr. Pickens' proposals and some perfect ideal; it is between two or more imperfect alternatives. EVERY energy source has environmental costs - even the windmills and (especially) solar panels greenies hold up as a panacea.

[Teamster]

It needs repeating.

The goal's are independence and our air and water neede for life on the planet.

We already have renewable energy products with out waste .


Ground water heating (and A/C earth source heat and cooling ( ground temp nominally 56 degrees),

all year nationwide. Electric combined with ground source water produces no polution ,
just lakes and plant life and wild life habitat -no spent fuel cells or carbon of opon flames or combustion.

From waste we have BIO Diesel combined with electric ( wheel generated) Deisel W/Electric turbine
70 an more mph rail service.

First came in use for national transport of passenger and freight in 1929. same principal as our hybrids,
(perpetual) wheel generated electric to storage battery/ 60 mph highwat / 60 mpg / now we can use renewable / bio deisel

Sustainable sources of natural gas would have better quality and less cost. Still it offers ecological
properties for our public safety and health we do not need..

[sheilaofmiami]

Mr Pickens, do you know the environmental impact of removing gas from where it has been for eons? Will there be giant sink holes when the gas is gone? Will we replace it with something else? what?

Yes, we need to get off oil, but there is only so much oil, and so much gas and so much of everything else. Only so much heavy metals in the ground, only so much water on the planet.

All resources are finite. Until humans can move beyond eating up our world and ourselves, I see no hope. We can stall disaster with substitute fuels, and we can "go green" and use less over all, but the truth is, the oxygen molecule you breath in has been around and around, and who knows where and when it was there. But is will be gone forever if we burn it. Energy does not transfer back to matter, it only goes one way matter to energy.

What matters most is that there is only so much matter in the first place. It does not "matter" where it comes from or what form.

Humans take and do not give back, I am as guilty as anyone. I am living the life presented me, as cleanly as I myself can, but I still use gasoline and plastic and paper and other items that are clearly finite.

Where is Star Trek when we need it so........­.......

[ConservativeHippie]

Will there be giant sink holes when the gas is gone? Will we replace it with something else? what?"

I haven't had the opportunity to look into "carbon capturing" but I'm wondering if the two might not be a one, two punch. What are we going to do with the carbon? When the natural gas wells are depleted there will be infrastructure for pumping gas out of the ground. Could it be used to pump gas back into the ground?

[Brandon Crisler]

Carbon capture is foolish to begin with, but to answer your question it requires porous rock not a hole in the ground like a gas deposit.
Unfortunately, when it rains its likely to push the carbon out of said rock. All in all its a dangerous and expensive gamble.

[DBritt]

This response is scientifically ignorant in the extreme. When you react hydrocarbon fuels with oxygen no matter disappears. You have the same mass you started with at the end. Just the bonds changed. In converting C-H bonds to C=O bonds you release energy. If you can put that energy back in somehow (plants have figured this one out) you can reverse the reaction and end up with high-energy bonds again. No matter lost, no matter gained. Just a change in bond energies.

The greatest source of this energy we have is the sun. We get so much free energy there we wouldn't know what to do with it if we could capture it all. However, at present we don't know how to capture it effectively. That's the crux of the issue. So I agree with you that our resources are finite, with that one exception. Yes, there is a limit to the solar flux, but it is so far beyond what we need we really don't have to worry about it right now. We just need to figure out how to put it to use.

But I guess the real point here is that you need to do some research on *how* we get energy out of things and the actual physical or chemical processes involved before you start writing down opinions.

[DailyElitist]

I'm afraid you're always going to be hopeless then, because the only way to move beyond "eating up our world" is if we discover new laws of physics which enable the construction of the equivalent of perpetual motion machines. That doesn't seem particularly likely to happen.

As already noted, your assertion that combustion destroys matter is ignorant in the extreme. It is a chemical reaction, not a nuclear one; the energy comes from changing chemical bonds.

With regards to our consumption of resources, why do you feel that is unethical? What is ethical about leaving minerals or metal resources in the ground and never using them? If we do that, it's just as if they never existed in the first place, so what's the harm in using them up? Of course, we must take care to ensure adequate capital investment to compensate for their depletion, but that is not to say we ought never develop them. There's nothing wrong with "taking" - rather, transforming - natural resources for our ends.

Regarding concerns about depletion, those are unwarranted. We know of more useful resources now than at any time in the past, precisely because of our development of resources. Also, do remember that our resource base is not necessarily restricted to this planet alone. Just in our solar system, there's estimated to be enough materials to support an advanced human population of something on the order of 10^16.

The limits are only those which we impose on our own imagination.

[tjinc]

One of the largest sources of natural gas pollution is when it escapes into the air in the process from extraction to storage. Natural gas companies currently don't pay for the gas until they have possession of it in storage. They need to start paying for it as it comes out of the ground so they're less likely to let it escape. An EPA official told me that chemical sensing devices go off the charts with the amount of natural gas escaping when trained on the drilling rigs.

Lest we lose sight of our goal, we need to remember that it is not simply dependence on foreign oil, it's dependence upon polluting and unsustainable energy sources.

Natural gas is one of them. Extraction of natural gas has taken place in the West for many years. This isn't new.

If we target natural gas as one of our energy sources along with wind, solar, geothermal, and others, it needs to be more closely regulated.

[Justtellthetruth]

Please thinks apples and apples; compare the amount of lost natural gas with the total carbon and pollution footprint that emerges from oil exploration, extraction, transport, refinement and use. The same amount of energy obtained by oil is SO VASTLY more polluting that it cannot be compared.

Then add the national security cost of the war on terror, (because our ONLY interest in meddling in middle eastern affairs is oil.. Remove that concern, and we could CARE LESS what happens there) and the case for natural gas is SO great that it is unimaginable that we are not RACING to embrace it right now.

Then add the fact that ALL of this money would be spent right here at home, and you have the best possible scenario available to us now for energy independence.

[un-naturalgas]

Sorry, Justtellthetruth, no.

You'll be interested to know that getting natural gas out of the ground requires phenomenal amounts of diesel. Go to any area where gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing are done and you will see more heavy equipment in 5 minutes than you've seen the rest of the year. Everything about the process uses diesel: Diesel to clear and level the site, diesel to drive the compressors that bring the cuttings back to the surface during drilling, diesel to bring in the millions of gallons of water, diesel to haul away all the water that comes back up - and that can include water that never went down the hole, since many gas-bearing formations also contain brine water. Diesel for the compressors that do the fracking, even diesel (well, they're not supposed to use it any more, but who knows?) as part of the fracking fluid.

[OkieMon]

give me natural gas over nuclear any day of the week and double on sunday....­.

[Waltfl]

Dear Mr.Pickens­,

I've read your plan. It seems to be rather a strategy to reduce oil imports than reducing carbon emmissions. I am not dogging it, anything is better than no plan. Therefore I appreciate your efforts. It still appears strange to me that you as a Republican are counting on big government to do it all, by encouraging big businesses to invest in apparently clean energy, and then basically guarantee their profits. Isn't that called "socialism" by your book?

Being an engineer I see this, and more: Your plan bets heavily on natural gas and has a clean coal element. First, there is no clean coal. It also considers only the supply side, but leaves energy demand, which can be influenced right away, out. Natural gas is cleaner than gasoline, yet by no means emmissions-free.
The plan seems to ignore viable alternatives which are: solar&thermal plants and shifting freight from highways to railways. What about approving feed-in tariffs, that allow people, who generate solar energy through photovoltaik, to sell their electricity back to power companies, as successfully done in Europe? Such legislation in Florida is currently backed by Governor Christ, but is being blocked by Republicans in the State Capitol, on behalf of big power companies.

Therefore, Mr.Pickens­, it is sometimes a good idea to put your wallet where your heart seems to be, instead of supporting politicians who block renewable energy legislation.

http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/T_Boone_Pickens.php

[sheilaofmiami]

I like the way you think.

[Brandon Crisler]

Very well said. And of course he isn't interested in lowering demand, he's a mercenary like all the others. It's funny--when he's interviewed he can be cornered into expressing his real motives. His plan involves drilling in ANWR and off all our shores. This is all more marketing than reality.

[research]

Now he sounds like a profiteer!

I like the Plan Picken's had adopted.

It has one flaw, a choke point for: Natural gas supply.

Installing Extensive rooftop solar in Air conditioning peak locals, will solve the problem, by freeing up the gas turbine peaking fuel for trucks backup power.

See my profile for details and calculations.

Rooftop solar for air conditioning peak loads is already cheaper than utilities in California and many other locations.

2.7 cents per KWH.

NanonSolar's installed Rooftop at 2$ per peak watt installed gives 2.7 cents over 30 years, 5.4 cents over 15 years.

Even at last years retail prices of 8$ installed, 12.4 cents per KWH cheaper than CA's 19 cents per kwh.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/profile/research?action=profile

[othel]

T Boone should quit wasting money advertising this and invest in implementing a practical program that will verify his claims. He could start by setting up a series of natural gas stations thoughout Texas. Start small and let people see how it fairs. I'm sure many towns would jump at the opportunity to operate their municipal vehicles on natural gas. Get the ball rolling in your own back yard, T.....then sell it nationwide.

[Skaperen]

Even natural gas is just a transitional energy source. Using NG gas is still releasing carbon into the atmosphere that was previously naturally sequestered underground. To the extent that it is cleaner (e.g. doesn't include nasty stuff like sulfur), then that's a good reason right there to shift usage away from oil and coal. And avoiding foreign oil certainly puts us in a better position on the world front. But it is still transitional.

Even nuclear is transitional, although if it is done right (we have a history of not doing it right) it can be a very long transition. Ultimately we need to be tuning our energy demand to the "solar energy quota", which is the energy we are getting directly from the sun in various forms (direct photovoltaic, wind, hydro).

[Brandon Crisler]

This is a foolish group of statements. Calling Natural Gas and Nuclear "transitional" is tremendously misleading. They are far more expensive and time-consuming than REAL renewable energy. We could have 100% renewable energy for the price of 10 nuke plants and in half the time, and the idea that we could replace all our cars with NGVs as an INTERIM solution is absurd. Lets actually work toward a goal rather than falling for marketing schemes and employing stop-gap measures that take longer than actual solutions.

[jqcitizen]

The 'Natural' gas has always been there to assist in forcing that 'Black Gold' to the surface.

T.Boone is correct. Forget foreign oil and dry oil wells in Texas and Alaska.

Use natural gas.

[Brandon Crisler]

He's in favor of dirty wells in Texas and Alaska!

[Russycle]

And yet, NW Natural raised their rates this winter in anticipation of a shortage. There may be a glut due to the slowing economy, but getting gas out of shale is still tricky and may cause goundwater contamination.
http://www.ogj.com/display_article/359360/7/ONART/none/DriPr/1/DOE-notes-water-as-key-issue-in-deep-shale-gas-primer/

Sorry Mr. Pickens, you may be right but after the Swiftboating episode pardon me if I don't take your word for it.

[AlexNYC]

Pickens is right about the US getting off it's dependence on foreign oil, but if natual oil is so abundant, why has my gas bill increased dramatically 2 winters in a row? I take what ever he says with a grain of salt anyway because of his involvement in the swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004.

[elmerfude]

So what if T makes some money. I am a free market socialist particularly when the market sells something that is useful and environmentally friendly. I also don't begrudge Al Gore making a buck off clean energy. Natural gas is a good interim solution to oil and coal until we can transition the market to something even better. T is also an advocate of wind energy. Good for him.

[abbeyroad]

The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves - after all
The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves - after all
It's a competitive world

Everything counts in large amounts

The graph on the wall
Tells the story of it all
Picture it now see just how
The lies and deceit gained a little more power
Confidence - taken in
By a suntan and a grin

The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves - after all
The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves - after all
It's a competitive world

Everything counts in large amounts

[KPinSEA]

Combine widespread availability of natural gas with Honda's Clarity hydrogen car and their Home Energy Station that extracts hydrogen from natural gas so you can fill up at home (or a suitably equipped gas station) and you've got a huge asset for kicking our addiction to Saudi crude.

It's not a magic bullet. There is no "the" magic bullet, but here's another great option to combine with biodiesel, wind, solar and tidal.

The President's goal is no imported energy from the Persian Gulf. We can get there, all it takes is the will to overcome the entrenched domestic lobbies that want to keep profiting from our addiction.

[tjinc]

The President's goal is sustainable energy that reduces the amount of pollution and greenhouse gases.
That means getting us less dependent upon oil, and not just what we get from the Persian Gulf. We get oil from a lot of friendly countries as well.

[DBritt]

How are you gonna store that hydrogen in the car to get more than a 50 mile range?

[KPinSEA]

Um, the Clarity has a range over 250 miles.

[DBritt]

Furthermore, sorry for the double post, why would you turn natural gas into hydrogen instead of using it directly?

[KPinSEA]

As a step into a hydrogen based economy ... adding the infrastructure to do large scale desalination and hydrogen extraction won't be cheap or quick.

[un-naturalgas]

There is a way to make the use of methane and NG cars safe for those of us who need water and air, and that's to collect and use the methane we generate every day in daily life. For purposes of combustion, methane is methane, whether it comes out of deep geologic formations (thermogenic) or is derived from decomposing organic matter (biogas). Normal activities of daily life, including food production, generate vast amounts of waste that release methane into the atmosphere as they decompose. Harvesting and using for energy this truly 'natural' gas that we can't help but make anyway, thus keeping it from persisting in the atmosphere for years and worsening climate effects, is a sensible part of the solution and the only green way to power a natural-gas-powered vehicle. Agriculture accounts for 20% of US consumption of fossil fuels. Therefore, just converting biowaste into methane to fuel farm equipment would make a huge difference.

When there's methane all around us begging to be used, destructive mining techniques such as drilling and hydraulic fracturing to release methane that *had been* safely sequestered thousands of feet below ground is nothing short of money-induced madness.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/dudewheresmycar/35C19DA711984DAF8E0B77A674F5E540/top-gear-methane-powered-car.aspx
http://www.google.com/search?q=sewage+used+as+energy&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3RNFA_enUS208US212
http://news.google.com/news?q=sewage%20used%20as%20energy&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3RNFA_enUS208US212&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wn