The American Spectator

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Energy Liquidity

3.12.07 @ 12:01AM

CLASSICAL GAS
Re: Bill Whalen's Who's Afraid of Liquified Natural Gas?:

"...The problem is, California generates less than one-seventh the total amount of natural gas that it needs to meet consumer demand."

By making the above statement, Mr. Whalen is swallowing whole the line of a few energy companies, like Sempra Energy and Australia's BHP Billiton. While it is true that California does not produce nearly all the natural gas it needs, the state never has produced that much. Rather, its supplies come from the Permian Basin, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Canada via several pipelines.

The U.S. Energy Information Agency's latest forecasts of California natural gas use see it as flat for the next 30 years. Those same forecasts indicate North American supplies will be at least adequate to supply California needs during that time.

Yet the push for LNG goes on even though no state agency has even bother to stage a hearing where claims of need for LNG can be examined and cross-examined. What a way to make decisions that will cost Californians untold billions of dollars in additional natural gas rates for decades to come if any of the current planned projects are completed!

Mr. Whalen has been suckered, and I don't know why. Did he want to be?
-- Thomas Elias
California Focus columnist

Bill Whalen, a purportedly smart individual, rants emotionally in his support of liquefied natural gas for California. Where are his facts? Where is the data, preferably empirical?

Alternative energy methods exist today to provide all of the electricity our state uses. This is established fact. What's needed is money to build the commercial solar plants in our deserts and to hook up the wiring. What's needed is seed money so average folks can put photovoltaic panels on their roofs.

Doing just that frees up the existing natural gas for our stoves and heaters. This will suffice for the short term as our inventive geniuses devise efficient electrical devices of providing for those needs in the long term.

If the proponents of importing foreign fossil fuels insist on persisting in their venture, then they should be required to swear in evidentiary hearings as to the known supplies available both for U.S. importation and to meet the ever-increasing needs of Asian nations emerging into the First World.

We don't want to get into an energy war with, say, China!

And if our governmental types, both political and bureaucratic, insist on such importation, they and the supposed scientific experts likewise should face evidentiary panels establishing both the need and the costs. Then they should cement their resolve by placing the first regasification plants off such communities as Beverly Hills, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and other wealthy cities. The process is safe, isn't it? It's needed, isn't it? Then why do they always pick on impoverished, small locales in which to site these facilities?

Fair's fair. They who reap the rewards should suffer the ills created by their aggrandizement.
-- Roger G. Pariseau, Jr.
Oxnard, California

As a citizen of Alberta, which makes a lot of money supplying gas to California, I am pleased. The supply shortage will raise the price we get for our gas. Excellent. California is rich, they can pay for luxuries, stupidity is a luxury, let them pay.

As a friend of the U.S.A. I am unhappy. Dear stupid enviro-nuts: The law of supply and demand is immutable; you cannot change it any more than you can eliminate gravity. You are increasing supply elsewhere in the world. The price elsewhere will fall. Someone, probably the Chinese will buy the gas, and burn it. The net effect of your childish naivete is more money for me (good), less money for you (good -- less to spend on truly damaging stupidity, and bad, as the U.S.A. becomes less secure and poorer) and more money for the Chinese.

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