Natural Gas

A new Pickens plan: Good for the U.S. or just for T. Boone?

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Three years ago, with a flurry of national publicity, billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens outlined his vision of how to help wean the U.S. off imported oil. The crux of the plan was to build a massive, $1 trillion network of wind farms stretching from Texas to North Dakota, which would replace domestic natural gas used to generate electricity. The excess natural gas would then be used to power millions of American trucks and cars, thus freeing the U.S. from the shackles of OPEC oil.

New report suggests shale natural gas is worse for climate than coal

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A new study from Cornell suggests that the production of natural gas from shale using fracking techniques generates more greenhouse gases than burning coal. The report has generated coverage by New York Times, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle, as well as a response from the NG industry. (Article extracts and links)
UPDATE: Link to the embargoed report

A film review: ‘Gasland’

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The second half of the oil age will be very, very different from the first half. The first half was awash with cheap, easy-to-find and easy-to-produce oil and gas. The second half will be the story of expensive-to-produce hydrocarbons, from increasingly inaccessible places … Unless we are able to break our addiction to hydrocarbons sooner rather than later, it will be a wretched and increasingly desperate time of squeezing fuel out of anything we can.

 

Five lessons from a month in hell

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On the surface, the nuclear crisis in Japan and the political crisis in Libya (along with at least five other countries in the region) might seem unrelated. But when it comes to our self interest here in the United States, there’s one thing that binds them together: our unquenchable need for energy and the price we pay for that addiction. And there are a few lessons I think would behoove us to learn from this month in hell…

After Fukushima: a new dash for gas? Really?

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The final outcome and cost of the nuclear accident at Fukushima are yet to be determined but the obituary of the nuclear industry has already been written, and one competing source of power has already been declared the absolute winner by the Serious People: natural gas. Renewables are nice, but unSerious (not “reliable,” too expensive) so we need to rely on the big boys. Coal is a bit too dirty to be pushed openly, so gas is it. Cheap, abundant, clean and quick to be ramped up. Case closed.

Or is it? Let’s take all of these arguments in turn.