No Moss

Natural Gas Could Cure What Ails America

Well, natural gas is sitting at less than $3.00 as I write (that's per million BTUs or per 1,000 cubic feet). The actual cost of LNG from the Arabian peninsula has to be computed as the wellhead cost plus the cost to convert to LNG, the cost to ship, the cost to reconvert to NG, and the cost to deliver to the consumer. At present, Arab countries would have to give us the gas for nothing in order to compete, and maybe even subsidize the conversion process.

You can argue that extensive use of gas would push the price up, and that's true. But LNG shipping and receiving capability would be quickly overtaxed, so those prices would go up too. There is an incredible supply of natural gas in the US, and there's no bottleneck in its supply. The ability to drill and deliver is all in place.

Changing the mentality of Americans is the critical step here. Big oil and the oil service industry, the car-makers and associated parts industry, and service stations and repair shops are all afraid of the change to anything away from the internal combustion industry.

Big oil has been a source of contributions, the mother's milk of politics, ever since Lyndon Johnson brought in Brown and Root's money during the third FDR election (1940).

Thailand has managed the shift to LNG pretty easily, as an example. While they have far fewer service stations than the US, it is also true that a partial shift to LNG could be handled with only a few stations along interstate routes, and the use of LNG to power fleet vehicles, such as urban public transportation and local delivery vehicles, which can return to a central location for refueling.

Instead, we piddle along without a coherent energy policy, pursuing such idiocy as ethanol, which, when corn-based, consumes as much energy as it produces.

Electric cars are fine, but you have to remember that the electricity they use has to be produced by something, and in America's case that is primarily by coal.

The path of least resistance at present is to offer lip service to "clean energy" and "energy independence" while doing nothing to actually accomplish it. Oh, I forgot, we funded the purchases of new cars, the great majority of which run on gasoline. Made those sheiks in Saudi Arabia happy!