America’s abundant supply of clean-burning natural gas is turning into the sort of success story that more and more people are beginning to take notice of. So writes Dan Piller in the Des Moines Register:
What had been a quiet story went national last year when Exxon Mobil, long dedicated to developing new oil and gas reserves on other continents, put down $40 billion for a Fort Worth company with big natural gas reserves in the Barnett Shale field in North Texas.
Exxon Mobil’s move into natural gas refocused it as either a fuel for a new generation of natural gas-run automobiles, as advocated by Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, or the fuel of choice for new electricity generators should the nation’s fleet of 270 million automobiles shift to electric power.
Environmentalists generally have given natural gas their highest marks among the fossil fuels. It emits between 50 percent and 70 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than coal.
The ever-increasing supply of domestic natural gas is doing much more than drive down the cost of the cleaner burning fuel for consumers. It’s also shaking up energy markets as natural gas emerges as the fuel of choice:
The sudden rise of natural gas is credited with throwing wind energy into another of its periodic slowdowns.
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