Off the Editor’s Desk – 4-10-2013
Why go green, when gas is so cheap?
President Obama has given millions and millions of our tax dollars to failing companies in an attempt to promote green energy. Our country is on the edge of producing all the energy that we use.
Natural gas is so cheap, that even the president and groups like the Sierra Club are trying to stop the development of new oil and gas reserves that will keep the prices of our energy needs down.
I looked over a recent billing for the natural gas that we need to keep our office warm in the winter. Looking over the billing I determined that the natural gas cost about 75 cents per therm for the heating plus another 31 cents per day for having the facility connected to my office building. It cost me $188.00 for heat in our Glenwood City office for the 30 days ending in the first week of March.
What is a Therm? That natural gas talk for 100,000 BTUs. It’s about the same number of BTUs in a gallon of L.P. gas. Why is it that natural gas is so cheap? Well, I believe it’s because of hydraulic fracking and shale revolution that has sent gas prices down. Frac sand from Wisconsin sent to oil and gas wells in North Dakota and other states, including Texas, has caused a boom in the oil and gas business.
Natural gas is hard to ship overseas and thus the market for gas produced in the United States stays in the United States and thus we have an abundant supply of gas.
About six years ago the Sierra Club and other greens thought natural gas was the good fossil fuel. The group received some $26 million in donations from Chesapeake Energy and others in the gas industry. But now, because of fracking, the price of that gas is at an all-time low and they feel that it will come to dominate U.S. energy production.
Those greens fear that natural gas will make the price of wind, solar and biofuel power so high that it will never become competitive. And, my feeling is that the people who are pushing for the green energy must do everything it can do to reduce the supply of gas and keep its price as high as possible.
If we let those greens have their way it would mean some 600,000 lost jobs in the natural gas industrial, which is eight times the number of jobs in the wind industry. Plus, it would hit us right in our pocketbook with higher gas and electrical prices. Is it the goal of the greens to ban all fossil fuels?
At the current price of natural gas, it even makes me think that you are not saving money by burning wood.
— Carlton