Converting to natural gas – what’s taking so long?
Posted By RichC on August 22, 2012
Since our nation’s oil and gas industry has expanded its capacity to produce natural gas in recent years, it only makes sense that we take advantage of this plentiful, clean, and low cost energy resource. It sure sounds like a sensible way to keep the United States an economically competitive place to build and expand business (creating jobs). On top of that, we would be more independent when it comes to our reliance on imported oil, therefore making the never-ending unrest in the middle east less critical to our economy.
But … our policies continue to favor less proven energy sources that do little to help American industries with the high cost of transporting raw materials to their facilities and shipping finished goods to market; small electric-only and hybrid vehicles might help urban and suburban folks when it comes to their daily runs to the grocery store or work, (if they aren’t unemployed [snide comment]), but electric vehicles do little to help in the manufacturing cycle of getting the crops from the field and transported to every step along the way that eventually ends up in that local store. We fork over millions of tax dollars to develop wind and solar, EV car companies and infrastructure charging stations while clean natural gas sits in storage facilities and is barely profitable (for the record, I’m pro-clean renewable energy and an “all of the above” guy, but see too much crony capitalism abuse with our tax dollars).
Instead of encouraging our nation to use our abundant natural gas, we are almost forcing NG companies to ship it overseas where China and the like will pay a premium to import it. To make matters worse, we then import a much more expensive, and far dirtier, resource — crude oil – which we then use to power U.S. farm equipment, trucks and trains … and then grumble about pollution, the cost of energy and consumer prices going up. Am I the only one seeing this as insane? I guess I’m not alone since the Picken’s Plan has been around for at least 4 years and is ignored in Washington … here’s a short audio (mp3 snippet) exchange with T. Boone Pickens this morning on CNBC.
CNBC — T. Boone Pickens on Squawkbox 8/22/2012 (snippet)
or listen (mp3) / watch the entire 14 minute interview.
CNBC — T. Boone Pickens on Squawkbox 8/22/2012 (14 min)
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