Natural Gas Updates
T. Boone Pickens on Natural Gas
HT: Paul Kedrosky
CS Monitor: What's the most pragmatic, pro-American, pro-jobs, bipartisan, economically feasible, environmentally-sound piece of legislation before congress right now? If you said Health Care, go stick your head in an oven...its the Natural Gas Act aka HR 1835!
HT: Joy Pavelski
23 Comments:
Natural gas burns more cleanly, and can recycle hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the US every year, rather than sending it to oil thug states, who finance terrorists that we spend trillions to fight--and who we may never stop fighting, now that the War on Terror has been institutionalized and federalized.
Convert you car to natural gas, or buy one off the lot at cngvehicles.net
The Energy Information Administration (EIA)
U.S. Crude Oil, Natural Gas, and Natural Gas Liquids Proved Reserves, 2008
October 29, 2009
Next Release: October 2010
Total U.S. proved reserves of dry natural gas rose by 6.9 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) from 2007 to 2008. That increase was on top of production of 20.5 Tcf and reflects another strong year of net proved reserve additions of natural gas in the United States. Natural gas proved reserves are now at their highest level since EIA began reporting them in 1977.
In 2008, dry natural gas proved reserves attributable to shale reservoirs grew dramatically, up 51 percent to a total of 32.8 Tcf, or 13 percent of total proved reserves of dry natural gas. Of this, 8.9 Tcf was from discoveries and 4.2 Tcf was from upward revisions and other adjustments.
In contrast to natural gas, reported crude oil proved reserves declined by more than 10 percent to 19.1 billion barrels, despite a third year of increased discoveries.
The problem with the Natural Gas Act aka HR 1835 is that the progressives can’t apply Cap and Trade leading to income and wealth redistribution hence funding their social engineering schemes.
If HR 1835 could include an extremely complicated (world’s most complicated) quasi-solution scheme such as Cap and Trade, and manage to create 15 or so new government bureaucracies, employing say 100,000 new unionized government employees, and if the EPA was allowed to exercise unlimited power over Natural Gas production, then the progressives would jump on board.
Speaking of the EPA, apparently Peabody Coal is not amused: World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud.
http://www.climategate.com/worlds-biggest-coal-company-brings-us-government-to-court-in-climate-fraud
Gazprom, Russia's huge natural co., also realizes its a shale gas world. Gazprom is lowering its prices 15% for European customers. This is a huge change from its position of linking to prevailing oil prices.
I am not endorsing this idea but what if the U.S. and Russia formed an OPEC like consortium? Hmmmmm...
Could this consortium be called USRGEC?
I digressed above -- I completely agree with Mr. Pickens. HR 1835 is intuitive and connect's with common sense. Let's get ur done. Maybe congressional approval ratings will go up if this can be passed jointly by the Dems and Pubs.
T Boone Pickens has turned into a giant rent-seeker, don't kid yourselves.
He was pimping windmills and natural gas just a year or so ago in the WSJ op-pages.
Now he's selling this market distorting initiative to line his own pockets.
"...market distorting initiative to line his own pockets"
Anon,
At least he isn't picking OUR pockets like the CAP/SPADE groups want to do to us
Clean Air Initiative: Infopool - CNG Bus
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a CNG (compressed natural gas) bus costs $25,000 to $50,000 more than comparable diesel bus. A typical diesel bus costs between $250,000 and $275,000, a natural gas bus between 15 and 25 percent more (i.e. about $40,000 to $65,000).
The Honda Civic natural gas vehicle is about $10,000 more (over $25,000) than the gasoline version.
KauaiMark - of course he's picking our pockets! Maybe he's doing it for the right reasons or whatever, but he has companies that would profit from this resolution, and it's still our money going to these tax credits.
It's not a new idea either. AZ tried this with disastrous results. http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=14196
People always find a way to game the system. The best thing to do is make sure the system is less gameable by limiting government power.
KauiMark, you may want to see John Stossel's interview of T. Boone Pickens.
He want's the government to chip in $10 billion toward that natural gas conversion.
Subsidy topic starts about 6:45 in. $10 billion figure comes out around 7:45.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTrGcqADE78
The next bill may be for buying a CNG auto. We'll send $11,000 in taxes, the government will spend months processing it, and then mail us a $10,000 tax credit.
Than Mr. Pickens, put up your own money and go into the NG industry without legislation or government incentives: case solved :) Anything else is plain hypocrisy.
Why am I thinking that T. Boone Pickens has his hand out again?
T Bone is an opportunist.
Hmmm. A guy who owns natural resources in gas is seeking government support.
Republican Rent Seeker.
He's an opportunist and his plan has flaws. Still, I do give the man some credit with trying to spurn something, especially in light of the depletion in the world's oil fields.
Mr. Pickens, you go sir. All major energy plans have some national involvement, especially since this would be an interstate effort. The U.S. subsidises the import of foreign oil by protecting fields and shipping lanes. A homegrown iniative that keeps dollars in the U.S. is a priority.
PeakTrader, when I was young & foolish I was part of a large farming operation. We ran a large number of tractors on butane/LPG gas, also the local gas utility ran their entire fleet of utility trucks and most of their autos on natural gas. Many farmers ran their pickups on one or the other. There is hardly a dime's difference between LPG and natural gas for fuel. All of these were after market conversions of gasoline engines.
It was not an expensive conversion. The largest expense was the 32 gallon high pressure tank for the gas. It would only take minor changes to gasoline type of engines to convert to natural gas. Higher compression heads, colder spark plugs and so on. Natural gas is an incredibly clean burning fuel. The engines lasted forever needing little maintence. We also ran stationary engines used for irragation with similar results.
I am macquechoux
So Boone is a rent seeker. That being said you need to evalue what he said rather than why he said it. Moving transportation to alternate fuels is never easy or particullary "cheap."
If I were a incity fleet operator of small and medium duty vehicles I would look very hard at the return on investment by switching to natural gas. I couldn't care less why T Boone is pandering to the public.
Anon, I'd like to see an unbiased study (rather than studies by environmentalists, natural gas producers, etc.)
Consumer Reports
April 2008
The natural-gas alternative
The pros & cons of buying a CNG-powered Honda Civic
Purchase cost. CNG-powered vehicles have generally cost more to purchase new than comparable gasoline models. Suggested retail for the Civic GX is $24,590 plus $635 for freight. A comparably equipped, gasoline-powered Civic LX lists for $17,760. Honda concedes GX resale values can also be $1,000 to $3,000 less than their gasoline counterparts. Add to that the cost of a Phill refueling unit at $3,400 plus the installation cost, upwards of $500, and the premium could easily top $10,000.
PeakTrader, nowadays it would make no sense for an individual to purchase NG powered cars as per Consumer Reports. (Most hybrids don’t make economic sense either IMO.) Even when conversions were simple you pretty much lost the use of your trunk and filling up a NG gas tank is not a consumer friendly thing with heavy high pressure hoses for filling and vapor return lines. The reason a Civic or any car or truck cost considerably more is it is a one off production unit. The biggest problem is redoing today’s high tech computer controlled cars to work with NG. An awful lot of stuff needs to be re-engineered and changed for a short production run. To me, the biggest obstacle is getting a large enough pool for fleet operators to commit to phasing in NG.
When I was young & foolish we had a 7200 gallon bulk tank for storage of LPG with several smaller mobile nurse tanks. If you have a fleet of vehicles the cost of a 1000 gallon setup is not out of the question.
macquechoux here again
Macquechoux, I wonder how much it would cost to mass produce natural gas vehicles, or how high gasoline prices need to rise to mass produce them.
Think Gas is High? Try Europe
May 28, 2008
As American drivers groan over prices nearing $4 a gallon, the French are paying $8.67 for a gallon (3.8 liters) of super...a gallon of diesel in French gas stations averages $8.54...and in the U.K. diesel costs $11.50 per gallon, compared to around $3.90 in the U.S. Across the European Union, the average cost of a gallon of gas runs to about $8.70.
Trader, I don't see NG gas catching on with the average consumer...The enviro whackos won't like it because it isn't sexy like hybrids and there are currently no tax subsidies and not to mention it comes from evil oil companies. Also witness the movement to ban/regulate shale gas drilling.
I’m not sure how NG measures up against large diesel engines for the 18 wheeler crowd. NG has fewer BTUs per gal than gasoline and way fewer than diesel. That was the reason we switched to diesel on the farms; we started purchasing larger more powerful tractors that could only be provided by diesel engines. We even purchased the same model tractor from International Harvester: One factory equipped with butane and the other with a diesel engine. More BTUs per gallon = more torque per cubic inch of displacement. To get the same amount of energy from a NG engine you would need an awful big engine complete with spark plugs and distributor and so on.
I believe it is a very doable concept, using the back of my paper napkin, for large fleets of cars, pickup trucks, school buses, and midsize trucks.
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