AlexS

America Needs a Natural Gas Transportation Infrastructure

The other thing specifically about natural gas is I suspect it would be more economical to build gas-to-liquids plants and plan on converting natural gas to gasoline (and diesel). You wouldn't really need to change the infrastructure or the vehicles, and it would cut imports. The big problem would probably be getting around regulatory and NIMBY hurdles.

America Needs a Natural Gas Transportation Infrastructure

"Jimmy Carter’s excellent energy policy reduced foreign oil imports by 50% between 1977 and 1982." The numbers might be accurate but your conclusion is incorrect at best. What actually happened is that Richard Nixon imposed price controls on oil and gas in 1971. Oil imports rose from 0.4 billion barrels in 1971 to their medium term high of 2.4 billion barrels in 1979, the year Carter introduced a "phased" withdrawl of oil price controls, although U.S. oil production was essentially flat at from 1979-1981. Carter, thankfully, was beaten by Ronald Reagan, who in 1981 simply removed controls entirely. Imports were down each year from 1980 to 1983, up again in 1984, then down to a local low in 1985 of 1.2 billion barrels. After that they returned to their more normal upward curve that had been established prior to price controls. You can see a nice graph and observe the Nixon/Ford/Carter price control import hump (it's very easy to see) at:

tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav...