In practice, most countries that have adopted effective gas flaring and venting regulations, including Norway and the UK, often use the hybrid of these two approaches. It also holds the prospect of opening up more of China’s shale gas resource, which is the world’s largest but has not been exploited as rapidly as that in the US. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment pared the EIA’s original estimate of “technically recoverable” natural gas in the largest of the shale deposits, the Marcellus Shale, from 410 tcf to just 84 tcf, an 80 percent reduction. Think about it. Even if the optimists are correct, with a production growth rate of just 2 percent per year, the country reaches a peak within 35 years! It’s a small part of the market, but it shows that the distribution of helium in a higher cost world might not turn out to be what most of us would think is socially desirable. But making public policy based on industry hype could turn out to be disastrous.

Instead, it contains a hydrocarbon-rich waxy substance called kerogen which must be heavily processed to turn it into oil. The hydrocarbons locked in the tar sands and the Orinoco oil belt in Venezuela aren’t what we call oil and must be heavily processed at high cost using enormous amounts of energy. By now you’ve been told so many times in television ads and news articles that we have a 100-year supply of natural gas in the United States that you assume it must be true. The good news is that these have yielded fruitful results. News and analysis for the global oil and gas industry focussing on technology exchange between emerging and established markets, in particular BRIC countries. A second study by David Rutledge at the California Institute of Technology concluded that worldwide reserves are probably half of those currently stated. Although gas prices have fallen in recent weeks (as of the date of this publication), many economists are predicting double-digit increases in the cost of heating this winter. Beyond this consider that the vast resources of natural gas from deep shale layers, commonly called shale gas, may not be so vast. The hard-to-get oil resources are large, but they take a long time to develop and require strenuous, expensive and energy-intensive methods to extract.

And, while it is true that these resources and others like them represent an immense store of hydrocarbons, what matters is the rate at which we can produce them. Even in a well-populated place like New England, throngs of traveling birds may pass mostly unnoticed far overhead of bustling towns and cities. 500 a month, you may be a millionaire, but you will never live like one. If you got lucky and have one of these, you use those names and addresses as leads. The definition of commodity which we often use to signify like, interchangeable products cannot be applied as freely to energy products as it is to other commodities, such as gold. This means that coal grades are dropping and that the actual energy the United States gets from domestic coal peaked in that year. As it turns out, the EIA projects a growth rate of just 0.4 percent per year in U.S.

And, data from EIA shows that the total heat content of coal mined in the United States has been declining since 1998 despite roughly level production. Among the environmental community, the big fear is that coal will displace clean natural gas and even become a source for liquid fuels as oil supplies wane. While the claim itself is suspect, even if we accept it, there is a very serious omission. There is many ways to create a “bright future” with renewable energy. Even without the additional oil drilling projects off the US Atlantic Coast, there is a current lack of oil industry workers. A 2007 National Academy of Sciences report concluded that claims of 250 years of coal reserves in the United States at current rates of consumption could not be supported. Rutledge noted that unlike oil reserves, coal reserve estimates have been steadily dropping over time as unwarranted assumptions were stripped away and the focus was put on what is actually minable. The 100-year figure was based on inflated estimates of recoverable natural gas and on ignoring the fact that the rate of natural gas consumption would have to rise exponentially to displace other fossil fuels. Measured on a global scale, electricity consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa is pitifully low, averaging around 162 kilowatt hours (kWh) per capita a year.

Wind energy is a clean, renewable form of energy that uses virtually no water and pumps billions of dollars into our economy every year. At just 2 percent per year growth, the 100-year U.S. 56 years. If we assume that production peaks when about 50 percent of the resource is exhausted, this puts the peak within 35 years. The picture gets acutely worse as the rate of production growth rises. All this, when combined with the relentless depletion of existing fields, spells little or no growth in the worldwide rate of oil production in the coming years. Simple spreadsheet calculations will tell you what happens to such long-term supply claims under the pressure of a little exponential growth. But if coal consumption were to grow beyond the current rate, then the 100 years of supply would quickly shrink as in the case of natural gas. The claim in its entirety reads: a 100-year supply of natural gas at current rates of consumption. These two facts suggest that natural gas will not be the bridge fuel environmentalists are looking for.