America's Natural Treasure

Natural gas can help ameliorate three serious problems the US faces regarding the security of its energy supplies. First, the country's electricity grid is badly congested and increasingly fragile. The increasing number of cases of interference with electrical service in the US, Europe and around the world, even from natural occurrences, is bad enough. But a bigger problem is that terrorists are much smarter than tree branches. Because US producers' success in extracting natural gas from shale has been so dramatic, natural gas is far more widely available around the world than when it was thought to be just an adjunct to oil production. The growth in natural gas reserves announced last year by the Colorado School of Mines' Potential Gas Committee (the largest increase in 40 years of estimates) suggests 120 years' worth of reserves exists in North America. Finally, on the very near horizon are plug-in hybrids.