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US faces critical gas shortage
By Sheila McNulty in Houston
Published: June 8 2003 20:13 | Last Updated: June 8 2003 20:13


Natural gas supplies in the US have reached critically low levels in recent months and may be inadequate to meet demand during a hot summer this year.


Spencer Abraham, the US energy secretary, has called an emergency meeting of the National Petroleum Council this month amid calls for the administration to deal urgently with the shortage.

Mr Abraham said the US had 696bn cubic feet of gas in storage at the end of March, the lowest since 1976 when record-keeping began. By the week of April 11, levels had dropped to 623bn cubic feet.

"Storage has increased since that time, but it is still only half the level of a year ago, and 42 per cent below the previous five-year average," Mr Abraham said.

On Tuesday Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan is to testify before the House energy and commerce committee on threats to the economy from the shortage.

Prices are reported to have increased as much as 700 per cent over the past three years, provoking industries from steel to petrochemicals to call on the government to address what they call "the other energy crisis" because it is less well known than the domestic oil shortage.

"No company, no industry, no consumer can absorb a threefold increase in major raw material prices and continue to compete in the global marketplace," said Greg Lebedev, president of the American Chemistry Council, the largest industrial users of natural gas.

The problem arose after the US government encouraged natural gas as an environmentally friendly fuel but refused to open what Mr Abraham said were about 40 per cent of the potential gas resources on federal lands.

Im glad my house is all electric.

And electricity is made by MAGIC! [:E]

[b]Actually[/b], electricity is harvested from kitten fur.

Well lets say Im paying a hell of alot less then my friend who uses gas.  Also thier is vogle electric generating plant 15 miles from here that ones a nuke.

my heat bill from 4/12-5/13 was $76, and it wasn't that cold then
if natural gas prices stay like this I'm seriously considering getting some electric heaters since my electric bill is about $35 in the winter
only thing running on gas in my apartment is the heat

Last month 35 dollars

Your average hear of cows and pigs produce thousands of cubic feet of methane a year.  So do garbage dumps.  You just have to the suckers indoors have collectors!  The smell has to be amazing.

Well, for us that's the water heater, dryer, and furnace. Don't need the furnace until November and we can hang cloths outside to dry in the sun all summer.

And since I got married, I take cold showers anyway.

I heard Texas was loaded with Natural gas.

And even more hot air. [nana]

[LOL]

It was the natural gas price hike/shortage that caused the California electricity crisis as most of our electricity comes from natural gas cogeneration plants. Natural gas rates were able to rise to high levels then fall back down.  Electricity is price controlled and this is one of the things that put PG&E into bankruptcy in that they had to pay the high prices but not pass along the costs to the consumer.  Then it all went down hill from there.  I hate this state's govt.

If only we could harness some the 'gas' around here !   [:D]

[img]http://www.tonidunlap.com/baked_beans.jpg[/img]

I use good ol' #2 home heating oil. Just filled up two 275 gal. tanks at about $1/gallon. Should go me a year and a half if we don't have an ice-age type winter again.

You can thank Clinton for these policies.

[url]www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1999/er1030900.htm[/url]

I call BS on this one.

I have two gas wells on my property, and my families prop. that joins mine have an additional five. The company that has our lease says there is not enough return on the profits to drill any new wells or re-work the present ones at this time.

This the way energy trading companies drive up the price in order to increase profit margin. If there was a real shortage drilling co's. would have all the work they could stand. When I see rigs and trucks sitting at the yard with nothing to do, how can there be a shortage?

Fook, unfortunately, it's true.  However, there should be a reactivation of marginal wells, and new exploration.

Currently, we are below the 5 year average for gas in the ground.  The US has added about 200000 MWs of new gas fired generation, and doesn't have the infrastructure to get that much gas to the plants.  

In Texas, 48% of elec. comes from gas fired plants.

It's gonna be an ugly summer.

THIS IS NO JOKE, it will affect the US economy if something is not done.  

This country needs to build nuke and coal units RFN, or it will be a bad couple of years.  If the winter is colder than normal, next year will be worse.

Last year, nat gas was 2-3$/ mmbut, now it is over 6.  It is true supply and demand.

We need to get the supply up, and the demand down, by building coal and nuke.  No 2 ways about it.

TXL

I don't now much about our fuel situation but I read the title and I looked over at the author expecting another Imbroglio thread.

What a pleasant surprise!

We really need to develop more solar, wind, and water-powered technology. It may not be the cheapest way now, but in the long run, say, over the next 100-200 years, it will be far cheaper.

Renewable is best. Zero emissions ain't bad either.

Didn't they say the same shit last summer?

Dams kill fish.
Wind kills birds.
Coal is "dirty."
Nukes are not PC.

We're screwed.

Guys, we have new source of gas and oil, IRAQ! People wonder why we went in. That Bush aint no fool.

just jumping in for two quick comments...
1)about landfill gas. after having lost a job burning trash in a waste-to-energy plant that got shut down, i got a one year stint at the nashua landfill. i had two modified cat gas engines consuming about 1000scfm of landfill gas(46-52%methane) producing a total of 3 megs. the government also pays a dividend for every scf of greenhouse gas destroyed, and it also counts if it goes through an engine and you earn money from the electric sales.
2) where i now work, besides regular boilers, i have a cogeneration unit and another one to be commisioned. these are small 5.5 meg solar package deals that consume about 1200 scfm at peak load. during this last winter, the boss resold the gas that was prepurchased and we burned oil instead. his best ONE DAY savings was $35,000

Now that's the way to go!

Ha ha.  I love our government.  Take this greenhouse gas and convert it into these greenhouse gases and we'll pay you a big fat dividend.  Who lined their pockets with that one?

Nuke, nuke, nuke.  We need more nukes.

It is really tough to get gas here from the Middle East.  It can go by ship in CNG form but it is expensive to move that way.  Best source of gas are the fields in the US West on Federal Land.

GunLvr