There’s so much gas, drillers are flaring it off because they have no way to transport it.
The Wall Street Journal reports,
U.S. energy companies are pumping so much natural gas out of the ground that prices are plummeting, and the cheap gas isn’t likely to evaporate anytime soon.
Natural-gas prices fell 5.7% Wednesday to their lowest level in over two years—good news for people who use gas to heat homes and for companies that use it to power factories.
For U.S. energy companies, however, the domestic natural-gas market is looking increasingly out of whack. Despite a 32% drop in prices last year, onshore production rose 10%, and it is expected to rise another 4% this year, according to Barclays Capital. As a result, prices are expected to remain low for at least the next couple years…
We need an energy policy to exploit our abundant natural gas. Naturall gas pipelines need to be built as quickly as possilb to all residences in the U. S. were it is practical. We have been using 100 million barrels of oil per year for home heating. This has to cost over $ 21 per million Btu. Natural gas could be supplied for $5 per million Btu with huge savings. In addition, this could stop the waste of using 3 Btu of heat to make one Btu of electricity for home water heating and cooking. The energy savings are tremendous and could cut quads of energy use by increasing the effectiveness of energy consumption. Send LNG to Hawaii and stop using petroleum for electricity generation. The possibilities to cut oil consumption and make effective use of natural gas are limitless.
Can we ever get a government that understands energy? The engineers of the country need to get involved in the political process and stop the nonsense being promoted by lawyers that are community organizers.
James H. Rust
Renewable energy such as landfill gas is somewhat based on natural gas prices. Now the race is between getting the government to pony up more money for renewable energy credits before the EPA unfreezes its solid waste management rules and makes landfill gas a solid waste, which will turn all those landfill flares into solid waste incinerators.
You got to hand it to the US government, they created the 4th state of matter: solid waste, which may be a solid, liquid or gas.