A LOOK AT ALTERNATIVE FUELS; IS NATURAL GAS THE ANSWER?

Despite the fact that gas prices worldwide have plummeted, our situation here in the U.S. has not changed. We are still way too dependent on foreign oil, we still will be out of domestic oil in 10 to 12 years, and petroleum is still polluting our planet whether you believe the Global Warming alarmists or not. The majority of the dollars we are sending overseas are still going into the hands of governments that have our destruction as a goal and or trade deficit is still way too high. For all these reasons, I beg all of you not to fall back into complacency and assume the danger is past. It has simply retreated only to return later, far more dire. In this piece I will be looking at the viability of using Natural gas as an alternative. My hope is to go through all our alternatives and help you best decide which will be the most viable option, or if a variety of options used simultaneously is best.

Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas (hence the name) found in the Earth that consists mainly of Methane, but also contains Butane, Propane, Hydrogen Sulfide and other trace elements. It is either pulled out of natural gas wells or is the bi product of oil wells. At the present time, it is used in the U.S. to primarily heat homes. If you live anywhere near a city in the U.S., your home is most likely heated by natural gas. Natural gas has been used in the U.S. since 1816 for both heat and light. More recently, it has been used to create electricity as a fuel in conventional steam boiler generators. It's cleaner than it's competitors such as oil and coal, and some people, most notably T. Boone Pickens, have been recently propping it up as a solution to our oil dependency. But how likely is that to happen? Do we have enough to do the job? And is it a good answer for our future? All of these are questions I will try to answer in this piece.

*Do we have enough?*

At first glance, it certainly seems we have enough. The U.S. has known reserves of natural gas in excess of 1,320 trillion cubic feet. That certainly seems like plenty, but first we have to study the mechanics of Natural Gas. Natural gas is measured in cubic feet, meaning the amount of gas that would fill a box 1'x1'x1' = 1 cubic foot. That would seem to be equivalent to about a gallon of gas, but there's other factors to consider. In order to compare them fairly, we have to "liquefy" the natural gas through compression. In order to get 1 gal of liquid natural gas, we have to compress approximately 100 cubic feet of gas. Even then it's not really equivalent. One liquid gallon of natural gas has approximately 3/4 the energy stored in it when compared to petrol (it takes126.67 cubic feet of cng to equal a gallon of regular unleaded gas) . That means that a gallon of natural gas in a car that normally gets 24 MPG will only get about 18 MPG, which in turn means you will have to burn more of it to cover the same distance. Another problem is that we already use natural gas to heat our homes and to power steam turbine power plants. At the present time, we only produce 24.5 trillion cubic feet a year in the U.S. and we already consume 23 trillion. That doesn't leave a lot of room. With the amount of natural gas that we would have to have to power our cars, estimated at 28 trillion cubic feet per year we would need to increase our production by over 100% or find a way to free up what we already produce. That would explain why the T.Boone Pickens Plan has, as one of it's centerpieces, replacing the amount of natural gas that we use for electricity production with wind and solar and why he's only suggesting replacing only a fraction of our oil consumption.

*So in conclusion.*

Is the idea of natural gas as a replacement for oil viable? Yes. But we have to consider a few more things before we jump head first into it. For one thing, replacing or increasing production would take years. Would that time be better spent chasing something else? We'll get into that later when we look at the other alternatives. Another thing to consider is that natural gas is controlled by the same corporations (Big Oil) that have been raping us at every opportunity. If we're going to invest in a new fuel source, wouldn't be better to not give a big monetary kiss to our rapists? Natural gas is a domestic source that is plentiful, cleaner, (but not really clean), and easily deliverable since the pipeline already goes to most of our homes. It's certainly worth considering. It would definitely be better than sending our money to governments that hate us and quite possibly are the source of funding for terrorists that are trying to destroy us. As we look at the future, it would serve us well to seriously consider all the options we have and natural gas could, at the very least, lessen our dependence on foreign oil in the short term. H.C.