Market Stability
Natural gas has the power to "rock the world," according to The Wall Street Journal. We've got more of it right here in America than Saudi Arabia has oil and are now the world's biggest producer.
The newfound abundance of natural gas has gotten a lot of people's notice, from Pulitzer-prize winner Daniel Yergin to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner himself. The vast new supplies of natural gas thanks to U.S. shale plays mean that there is enough natural gas available at lower prices to power and heat our homes and businesses and run our vehicles for generations to come.
And stable, abundant supplies mean stable markets, making natural gas an increasingly attractive option for power generation, transportation, industrial and residential uses.
Here's what the experts are saying about the long-term outlook for natural gas supplies:
Potential Gas Committee
"Potential Supply of Natural Gas in the United States" (June 2009)
The Potential Gas Committee in June 2009 reported that the U.S. has 1,836 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas-the highest resource total ever reported by the organization in 44 years. Added to DOE's proven resources, the future natural gas supply for the U.S. alone is 2,074 Tcf.
Cambridge Energy Research Associates
"Fueling North America's Energy Future" (March 2010)
"A major new factor-unconventional natural gas-is moving to the fore in the US energy scene and the national energy discussion,'' Cambridge Energy Research Associates says. Natural gas ``has the potential, at least, to cause a paradigm shift in the fueling of North America's energy future." Shale gas accounted for only 1 percent of US natural gas supply in 2000; today it is 20 percent. By 2035 it could be 50 percent, CERA says.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"The Future of Natural Gas" (June 2010)
"Abundant global natural gas resources imply greatly expanded natural gas use, with especially large growth in electricity generation,'' MIT said in its interim report on natural gas. ``Natural gas will assume an increasing share of the U.S. energy mix over the next several decades, with the large unconventional resource playing a key role.''
U.S. Energy Information Administration
"The combination of two technologies-horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing-made it possible to produce shale gas economically, and from 2006 to 2010 U.S. shale gas production grew by an average of 48 percent per year. Further increases in shale gas production are expected, with total production growing by almost threefold from 2009 to 2035," the Energy Information Administration says in its long-term energy outlook.
