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Is There Enough Natural Gas?

The numbers you provided concerning consumption of natural gas for transportation use and adequacy of reserves are reasonable, but that's not the whole story.

Because there are a limited number of natural gas outlets for CPN vehicles, one would first want to look at practical applications, such as fleet use in a local area. Certainly under that limited alternative, the supply of natural gas would be more than adequate, and the cost, even if natural gas prices rise to twice their current level, would still be less than gasoline or diesel fuel.

As to continued use of coal, there is at least one process (developed by SASOL) that converts coal to gas at sufficiently low prices to make such an alternative worthwhile. Sasol has several CTG plants outside the U.S. Whether these plants are low enough in CO2 emissions to please everyone is a question I can't answer, but CTG gets rid of most of the pollution problems associated with coal.

One would think that with all this stimulus money being thrown at infrastructure projects, a compressed natural gas infrastructure could reasonably be added to the list of cost effective projects. I make these comments on the basis of my past research in energy alternatives and my current position as director of the oldest online investment advisory service.