Mmarrkk

Making Natural Gas Transportation a Reality

WisdomvsInfo and Fitz: One other BIG issue for Asia and CNG vehicles: Asia imports a lot of their natural gas from the Mid East and Australia via LNG. LNG is priced at the oil market in those countries. Makes for a) higher prices and b) higher volatility!

The U.S. is blessed to have huge (huge with capital TCF's) NG resource in the ground. Most of the countries with populations in Asia do not. They also have even less infrastructure than the U.S. for nat gas. India still uses a large amount of LPG in tanks for their home use. Those nice little bottles of gas you use to power your gas grill...just a little bit larger and painted red! CNG will work there but will be more expensive than here.

I did hear yesterday that in those massive 0.5% budget cuts announced, oil and gas research was some of what was being cut! Thanks Dr. Chu! Way to stick up for us! Also nuclear power research was cut. Windmills and bio's are well funded though! Oh yeah, defense programs were cut, but that's not a surprise!

Good job Fitz! Keep it up! When my truck wears out I'll be looking for the NG powered truck. Probably won't be a Chevy again, as it looks like they'll either be gone or run by Obamma+UAW. That ought to be a jewel of a truck with those folks in charge! Hopefully Hyundai will make a truck here in the US, preferrably at a non-union plant. I'm not a big fan of the Toyota truck just yet!

On a lighter note, Artful Dodger, are you an english professor by any chance?

A Natural Gas Centric Strategic Long-Term Comprehensive Energy Policy

Fitz: re "subsidies" to oil companies. You listed "low royalties" as a subsidy. I disagree with this completely but here's but a piece of my rationale: COP and BP are the #2 and #3 NATURAL GAS producers in the U.S. Their number one gas producing field is the San Juan Basin, and a very large percentage of that natural gas comes from Federal Lands with those "subsidized" low royalties!! Those royalties were agreed to many years ago and are part of a contract. The contract was negotiated and were based on the going market rates. Same for offshore. Now, the "market" for royalties has gone up over the years, but do you contend that we need to dissolve the contracts that were previously signed? I don't like the fact that a government can go in and rip up contracts they signed. That puts contract law back many years and it is something that Obama seems to like (see his mortgage bailout plan).

Also, many of the so-called "subsidies" are actually targeted breaks for the most expensive incremental production, like deepwater drilling. Without these subsidies, none of that U.S. oil will get pumped out of the ground. So, eliminate these subsidies and you will eliminate some of our domestic production.

Still waiting on my NGV and the infrastructure to keep it filled. I believe its coming...just darned slowly!