I'm confused. Over the past eight years or so, the price of natural gas has gone thru the roof and we're paying some of the highest natural gas prices on earth so several different companies have built
LNG plants along the coast line of American to bring in natural gas.
They built a plant down in Freeport Texas and the plant got in one or two ships and then that was it. From what I understand, they can't get a ship to come into port in the near future, months and months away. Other countries are starting to pay more for the gas and its cheaper to ship it to them than to us. Ok I understand that.
Here's where I"m confused. T.Boone Pickens and a bunch of others claim that natural gas is so much cheaper than gasoline so we should start running our cars on LNG however we can't even get it here to begin with. Don't get me wrong I agree with him, I think we should produce more gas here, I think we should put up wind and solar farms from here to there along with new hydro dams but if we had to build LNG terminals to bring in natural gas from over seas, how is it different now? I mean we needed the gas before and didn't produce it here so we built LNG terminals to inport gas, so why now drill? Why didn't we drill before?
"Cheaper" isn't part of T. Boone Pickens' sales pitch. It's readily available and there is a lot of it that currently goes to waste. Plus, LNG is a cleaner energy source than diesel (and that's where his push is - not gasoline).
LNG can be produced by the many of the same wells that produce oil and right now much of the LNG that comes up during oil drilling is just burned off as a waste product.
I'm unsure of your references to the Freeport, TX LNG plant. From what I can find with a quick Google search it appears to be up and running. There are several references to the Freeport plant exporting LNG but I saw nothing on them importing any.
The biggest problem I've seen with the terminals is that no place seems to want them. They've tried building 3 or 4 new terminals in different areas here in New England and every time a site is mentioned people swarm all over it and it gets shot down. Everyone thinks we need them but no one wants one near them. A part of that, I think, is that there was a lot of fear right after 9/11 that the Boston LNG terminal was a terrorist target and that if they were sucessful they'd take out a large section of Boston in seconds.
But the goal isn't to bring in LNG from overseas. The objective is to capture the LNG we already have and get it to the places where it can be used. There hasn't been a good/easy way to get the LNG we have from the wells to the places where it gets used so the North American industry has just burned it off instead of trying to find ways to sell it. The idea is to end that practice.
I should mention though, that Pickens' plan is really about him getting richer than he already is. He presents his plan as an environmental push but he's invested heavily in solar and wind power and owns quite a bit of LNG capacity and transport capability.
It was obvious that the oil crisis had to happen eventually and the and only a fool couldn't see the financial crisis coming when the politicians insist on loaning money to people who can't possibly pay it back.
Natural Gas is the next crisis that Washington Politicians have created as they pander to environmental nuts. We can't drill our own and we can't build terminals to unload the foreign gas that we purchase from terrorist nations so the mexicans are only too happy to build terminals on their side of the border and pipe the gas to our side charging us another fee for the product making it even more expensive, all of this also costs us jobs and investment capitol.
When the #### hits the fan we will sit back and say "oh my" how did this happen, then we will vote the same people back into office so they can fix the mess they created and everytime they fix it they make it worse then blame it on someone else, they live in a bubble and have absolutely no common sense.
The only answer is to vote people into office that have proved they have common sense and at least a little bit of good judgement.
houtrz
The natural gas situation is one of those damned if you do or damned if you don't dilemmas. There have been several groups who have tried to build LNG ports offshore Louisiana but the enviros say no. The process of taking the super cooled liquid gas and warming it up in radiator like piping below the water surface is a no-no for them. It might kill a snail darter or something like that. You know the drill. As to the importing LNG, if the big oil producing company's don't liquify and ship the gas it will just be flared into the atmosphere since there's no market for it over there. The still use camel dung for heat in most areas.
Here in the US there has probably been more gas flared to the atmosphere than has ever been produced commercially. Here on the Gulf Coast as late as the late 70s, at night you could see the glow of gas flares all over the marshlands and offshore. There was just no market for it and it was dirt cheap, just a by product that is produced with the oil. Today, I shudder to think how much gas is used in production systems to gas lift oil wells that don't have enought bottom hole pressure to lift the weight of the oil to surface. Millions and Millions cu.ft are used over and over to help these wells produce but that's all recoverable at some point in time. The oil and gas companys finally got smart and started leaching out salt domes to be used as huge gas storage facilities.
As far as T. Boone there's more to it than his concern about our energy needs. He seems to fit in with West Texas real well, lots of wind.
Dave
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