happycajun

Natural Gas: Short Term Bear, Long Term Bull

Fitzman - Like I've told you before - Nat Gas just ain't novel enough for the Obamans to get charged up about, and it still releases CO2 & is a "finite" resource - all negatives to the administration, so they are going for the homerun, to leap ahead of fossil fuels entirely. I keep hearing "Moore's law" (after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore) recited for the proposition that "technology" results in a doubling of performance every 18 months, at one half the cost. Right. If this were true, we'd all be flying to the moon on tiny rockets purchased at walmart for $1.98.

I have seen a lot of trucks hauling large diameter epoxy coated line pipe (20+ inch stuff) and a lot of large diameter Cameron Ball Valves (in sets of identical units on trailer rigs) in north Louisiana and North East Texas - so some pipeline construction is underway. My thoughts are that the basic economics and "free market" (such as it is - the ol' invisible hand) will make nat gas rise to the occassion. The trip will be bumpy though, and will be in spite of, rather than because of, anything the current administration does.

Longoil - in principle, there is no reason that nat gas is needed to create hydrogen - in refineries, they crack the long chains to the point that only carbon is left from the hydrogen-carbon molecules - hence petrocoke byproduct. Way back in the old days, in a former era of oil glut - conoco had a major liquid gasification project to produce pipeline quality gas from abundant, cheap crude oil. (this was in the late 60's, early '70's). HOWEVER, it is probably more economical to use natural gas for the hydrogen source than to crack it from the raw bitumen, and produces greatey yields of syncrude.

The huge dip in oil and nat gas prices over the last nine or so months will only make the return to tight supply all the more abrupt and painful...

HC