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Cool charts and graphs in this piece by "Best and Brightest" Kurt Zenz House, about his new-found realization that "Natural gas will dominate the evolution of the North American energy industry over the next 20 years."
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Santa Cruz, CA
Of course. As fuel goes, it's practically ideal. 1. made in USA 2. abundant 3. needs no refining 4. 130 octane out of the ground 5. runs in any gasoline engine 6. 1/2 the price of gasoline 7. won't spill, won't slime and choke a pelican 8. burning it releases less CO2 than gasoline, because it's got 4 C-H bonds per molecule, higher than the ratio of octane (C8H18). 9. buying American gas keeps the money here. Today we send $500 billion/year overseas to buy foreign oil, enriching others. 10. 2,174 trilllion cubic feet 11. deep sea methane hydrates are enormous, someday they will figure out how to get that stuff and we are good for another thousand years.
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Corning, NY
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Natural gas is probably the most environmentally-friendly of the fossil fuels. Still produces CO2, but less than the others per unit energy.
It's so clean you can cook with it inside w/o a chimney.
Yes, there's impact when drilling for it. But it's probably not any worse than extracting coal and oil.
Remember those coal-sludge spills and the Deepwater Horizon?
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Vinod Khosla called shale gas a black swan. It really is a game changer (for the many reasons already noted by clambo above). Chemical plants are relocating from Mexico back to the US to take advantage of the cheaper feedstocks here. US Steel is adding more workers to produce rolled steel for fracking pipes. Additional domestic oil production is also a result of the techniques used by the drillers. The owners of the Seaway pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf are reversing the flow so oil will soon go from Cushing to Texas. This will give Dakota and Canadian oil access to Gulf Coast refineries.
I'm also bullish on methane from biomass, a renewable energy resource.
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EBGuy says
Vinod is an idiot. His background is in Computer workstations. He has zero experinece in the Petroleum Industry. Just like so many that made it big in Tech, somehow they are supermen and cant make mistakes.
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Santa Cruz, CA
A well informed dog or 2 year old human would see that natural gas is going to be fuel for our cars and trucks sooner or later.
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What about water pollution do to fracking? how big a issue can that be,
nat gas has is hard to move around due to its low density .... propensity to be a gas.
I think it will be very useful for things like energy needs that don't need to be moved until technology creates opportunity for extraction and utilization.
but I also think solar, wind should come into play.
I truely feel energy conservation or better utilization of our energy is the lowest hanging fruit ... my two cherries
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A well informed dog...
Today, yes. Seven years ago, no. Back then, companies like Cheniere Energy were building LNG import terminals. Cheniere is now reconfiguring terminals to export LNG to world markets.
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I'd be careful about being optimistic about Nat. Gas. All the producers are still giving very rosy projections despite already having to dramatically drop at least some of them not too long ago.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/38463/
The problem is that gas well production declines at a rapid non-linear rate.
Note, this is even when using fracking and advanced horizontal drilling techniques.
You only get a few years worth of economically viable gas production out of even "good" wells before you have to pull your equipment off elsewhere and redrill, which is very expensive.
Also note that while natural gas itself can be fairly clean burning there are "sweet" and "sour" wells that can release staggering amounts of green house gases at the production site. So the pollution factor is still quite high most of the time, its just coming out of the well head instead of your tail pipe or power generator site.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/files/39646/GHG.emissions.from.Marcellus.Shale.April12010%20draft.pdf
That .pdf is a study on the Marcellus Shale Gas wells and green house gas emissions. The money quote pops up real fast but the whole thing is worth reading for more info:
While it is true that less carbon dioxide is emitted from burning natural gas than from burning coal per unit of energy generated, the combustion emissions are only part of story and the comparison is quite misleading.
A complete consideration of all emissions from using natural gas seems likely to make natural gas far less attractive than oil and not significantly better than coal in terms of the consequences
for global warming.
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Shell is now considering building a $10 billion GTL (natural gas to liquids) facility in Louisiana. The end product, diesel fuel, could possibly be sent overseas. Gasoline consumption in the United States is at an 11 year low; strange days indeed.