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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Obama - Energy- Prosperity
  • Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 09:56:36 -0800

The U.S. has tons of NG, Frank. In fact, whole fields have been capped for future use.

It is imported because it is *cheap*! Less than $7/1000 cubic feet. When it costs more to import than to produce, then we'll stop importing. Now, when I was buying NG from P.G. & E., the import cost was $5.80/1000 cu ft and I was paying over $1.29/therm (1 therm = approx. 100 cu. ft.). That gave ol' PG&E $7.10 over cost.

And, you are correct in that only a small % is used for autos.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Fries" <frank.fries AT imagewireless.ca>


As I understand it:
- the US is currently importing some of your natural gas (NG). The US can
not presently produce as much as you are using and you have been increasing
imports.

- Currently the area of biggest growth in the use of natural gas in the US
is generation of electricity. There is only a small amount being used as
auto fuel. There are a number of attributes about natural gas that make it
harder to use as an auto fuel than propane for example, but it can and does
work well enough as an auto fuel once you have absorbed the expense of
conversion of the vehicle and the high pressure pumps, etc and can tolerate
a shorter range between fills.

- The ability to import is controlled by primarily pipeline capacity and to
a lesser extent LNG capacity.

- If the US converted even a small part of the transportation sector to NG
(say 25%), you would not be able to generate enough electricity at present
(unless you start building a lot more nukes and/or windmills and/or solar
and/or ...........)

- Beyond the pipeline capacity, there is definitely a finite amount of NG.
Like the peak oil debate, there is some speculation about exactly how much
there is (anywhere, to say nothing about it being reachable in an area that
is easy to transport from). Unlike oil however which peaks and starts to
slowly taper off producing less year by year, production in conventional NG
wells/fields does not peak and slowly decline. It works more like the gas
tank in your car, you can draw it out at full capacity until you are nearly
empty, then production drops off rapidly and then there is no more
recoverable.

Here is a link to a US govt website with some interesting facts about US
natural gas use, etc ...http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_sum_top.asp

Frank
----- Original Message ----- From: "bobf" <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 7:11 AM
Subject: [Homestead] Obama - Energy- Prosperity


I did like Boone Picken's ideas about autos running on natural gas, we seem
to have plenty of that here in this country.

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