“Think about an America where more cars and trucks are running on domestic natural gas than on foreign oil. Think about an America where our companies are leading the world in developing natural gas technology and creating a generation of new energy jobs; where our natural gas resources are helping make our manufacturers more competitive for decades. We can do this.” I’m one-hundred percent behind the president on this one. We are way too dependent on foreign oil with the resources we have available right here in our own soil.
With the global demand for energy expected to double in the coming decades, analysts are predicating a new boom in gas consumption. In the United States, the production of shale gas has already increased from 1 percent a decade ago to 23 percent in 2010.
Liquid natural gas has overcome two of its biggest hurdles, questionable supplies and volatile pricing. Recently, the opinion that gas fields were in irreversible decline has been reversed with a tremendous boom in natural gas production in the United States, including Texas, Pennsylvania and Louisiana, where they are already drilling in shale fields. This has subsequently pushed pricing down.
The questionable supply has been addressed as well with twenty-three states known to be high in organic matter. According to a 2008 report released by Navigant Consulting, there could be as much as 842 trillion cubic feet of retrievable gas in shale fields around the country. That would be enough to supply 40 years worth of natural gas.
With new concerns surrounding nuclear power after the crisis that followed the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011, and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has yet to resume since the disastrous BP oil spill in 2010, and coal plants have been under fire due to the harmful affects of global warming, it seems that liquid natural gas just might be the fossil fuel of the future.
