CapitalistMarks

Natural gas — priced for growth.

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by scott in economic daydreaming

If you are like me, and other Americans who can’t stand to be dependent upon nations and leaders who believe we are the ‘great satan’, then you will probably be glad to learn that America had enough of a resource right in our back yard to supply us for a couple of centuries (more or less) without importing any oil at all.

We’ve always had it but it hasn’t always been available or retrievable.  Now it is.  Thanks to American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit natural gas is about as abundant as political blowhards on TV.

Natural gas.  If you believe Boone Pickens it is the answer to all our problems.  I wouldn’t go quite that far but I would love to convert both my cars to run on it.

But — consider.  We can  heat our homes with natural gas, natural gas can power our huge electrical power plants, natural gas can power cars, trucks, vans and even hybrid cars.  And for you ‘rednecks’ out there consider that you can cook your hot dogs and ribs on grills using natural gas (propane in this instance).

I’m not going to go into the specifics of how it is sold (BCF’s — billion cubic feet), obtained (new fracturing in shale sites and horizontal drilling for example), or distributed and sold (through gas lines or in heavy duty metal containers) but this much is important . . . for the last three years or so the price has been dropping simply because there is so dang much of it out there waiting for us to take advantage.

What is really cool?  Well, the fact that natural gas now sells for about 1/3 of what it was selling for a couple of years ago.

Cheap, abundant, available and flexible — natural gas absolutely can provide this great country with decades (at least) of energy independence while we are developing and economizing more difficult energy solutions like wind, solar, nuclear and who knows what once American minds start really focusing on the problem.

So, why (you ask incredulously) aren’t we converting all of our cars and powering all of our dirty coal-fired generating plants with natural gas?  The only answer I can come up with is health care.

Huh?  You ask with further consternation.

Yeah, health care.

Obama and the dems are so focused on health care that they are neglecting important things like jobs (well they did just pass  a relatively poor jobs bill) and of course energy independence.  Maybe they will start to think about it next week after they ‘force’ their patchwork, poor excuse of  health care reform down our throats along strictly partisan lines.

But they might now.  Unless we, the people let them know we really, really, really want them to give us genuine energy independence.  By the way,  the repubs aren’t doing anything to push this either — so both sides need to get wired on to this critical subject.

Man would I love to tell Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and Venezuela that we don’t need their oil anymore.  What would they do without our billions and billions (thanks Carl Sagan) of dollars to finance terror and hatred.  Think what that would do to the so called ‘balance of power’ and the OPEC cartel!

You can Google (interesting verb isn’t it?) the facts and find out for yourself.

When you finish you can also Google (sounds like something a baby does) the email addresses for the White House and your Senators and Representatives and tell them you want them to take action now!  Not tomorrow but now.

Use our natural gas to do what Americans have dreamed of since the oil embargoes and hostage holding of the 1970’s (and ’80’s and 90’s and ’00s).  Freedom!  Oh, thank heavens we can be free at last!

I’m betting on natural gas.

I hope Obama, Reid, and Pelosi would too!

thanks to flickr’s roy.luck for the photo

Tags: energy independence, natural gas, NG powered cars, oil imports