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Neighbors and friends, Jerome.  Certainly no worse than with Europe and Russia.  Perhaps the author is not really an energy expert, perhaps he misstated what was truly domestic, but I think there is little doubt as to the relative abundance of natural gas compared to coal in North America, and its use is far more benign for the environment.  Not nearly so good as making everything run on wind, tidal, solar and geothermal, but an improvement, environmentally, from oil and it would greatly improve our balance of payments while reducing our exposure to supply disruptions from the mid east, which, itself, would undercut the justification for imperial approaches to oil supplies.  

It seems to me that at anything like current prices, market forces will encourage a longer term move to renewables, but CNG could help in the short term, especially for fleets.  CNG-hybrids could be a good interim solution for school bus fleets, and other government vehicle fleets especially.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Aug 31st, 2008 at 09:05:09 PM EST
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I meant "relative abundance of gas compared to oil," of course.  We all know about all the coal.

I would like to see something that puts the probable contributions of the more recent Barnett, Fayetteville and Haynes gas fields into clear context.  

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Aug 31st, 2008 at 09:11:07 PM EST
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North America is likely to run into shortage of natural gas long before oil. Oil, you just need to be ready to pay more, and suppliers can be anywhere around the world. Natgas - you need the pipelines or the LNG infrastructure, and domestic production is shrinking. It's been booming this year thanks to new developments in production from shale, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is (in terms of pollution, water use, and actual perspstence of production levels).

And the easiest way to reduce gas use is to burn coal in power plants...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon Sep 1st, 2008 at 03:55:59 AM EST
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I suspect you are right about running out of gas first.  I expect you have a much better feel for that than do I.  I am also concerned about the projected lifetimes of the new fields.  That is why CNG for vehicles seems, at best, to be an interim solution.

But everything is interim with fossil fuels.  If there are  adequate supplies for home heating and industrial uses as well as providing some significant portion of fuel for vehicular transportation, say 20%, for another 15 years, that would seem to be an adequate window for an interim CNG solution, especially for school bus fleets, etc.  That is what I would like to see explored.  That, and the degree of confidence, if any, that we could have in any answer.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Sep 1st, 2008 at 12:04:58 PM EST
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