It appears that demand for gasoline is more or less inelastic, but that fuel costs represent only a small fraction of the average U.S. household’s budget, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution.
“Peak oil” theory for production is predicated on the work of legendary geologist M.King Hubbert, who in 1956 employed his now famous/infamous “Hubbert curve” to predict U.S. petroleum production would peak in 1970. For many years he appeared to be correct, but the “shale revolution” is on the verge of proving him premature.
When the EPA proposed lowering the country’s ethanol-use mandates for this year and next, it set up a public hearing to let people tell it what they thought. On Thursday more than 280 people showed up to testify at the Jack Reardon Convention Center in Kansas City, Kan., and most had the same message: “Don’t mess with RFS!”
A plan to reduce the amount of renewable fuels required in the U.S. gasoline supply drew heated condemnation of the petroleum industry Thursday from two governors who said health of the ethanol industry is vital to their states’ economy.
The debt that fueled the U.S. shale boom now threatens to be its undoing.
Honda Motor Co. is giving up on its compressed-natural-gas Civic, 17 years after introducing the model in the U.S.
We’re headed to the L-NGV2015 conference in San Diego, where natural gas will be in the spotlight.
Natural gas has been getting a lot of attention lately, because the United States is producing so much of it. As Jude Clemente wrote in Forbes earlier this month:
U.S. proven natural gas reserves continue to soar to record highs. We now have some 360 Tcf [trillion cubic feet] of proven gas in the ground, recoverable under current market conditions, experiencing increases of 5-8% per year. Driven by the Marcellus shale play in the Appalachian Basin, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have registered the largest gains, with both state reserve totals more than quadrupling since 2010. In fact, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have accounted for about 60% of new U.S. gas reserves since 2008, although mighty Texas continues to plug along, upping its reserves by 20% since then.
The surge has occurred despite a steady decline in prices. Henry Hub spot prices are about $2.80 per million British Thermal Units, down from an average of $8.86 per MMBtu in 2008, as Clemente notes.
NG is running about 70 percent lower in price than the equivalent amount of oil, even with oil’s precipitous drop from last summer. That’s what makes natural gas an attractive alternative for transportation fuel.
Much of the discussion at L-NGV2015 will center on compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is being used in municipal fleets (official vehicles and transit buses) and industrial trucking (delivery, garbage-hauling) around the country. These fuels not only cost less than gasoline and diesel, they burn much cleaner, which is better for air quality and the environment.
Natural gas can also be converted into alcohol fuels to run in the cars, trucks and SUVs driven by the rest of us.
NG is “very, very cheap, and we need to take advantage of that,” Fuel Freedom co-founder and chairman Yossie Hollander said recently during a discussion about energy in Israel. “The greatest opportunity is a transportation one. Using a natural-gas product, whether compressed natural gas, liquid natural gas, ethanol from natural gas – you can make ethanol from natural gas, and another fuel called methanol – if we use all of them in transportation to replace oil, this will replace a $3 trillion industry around the world.”
We’ll be presenting more about this topic at L-NGV2015. Check out our Twitter feed (@fuelfreedomnow) for regular updates.
Oil’s dramatic price changes seem baffling. In mid-2014, crude prices averaged around $100 a barrel; now, they’re gyrating between $50 and $60. Over the same period, U.S. gasoline prices have dipped from more than $3.50 a gallon to around $2.50. With the world economy slowly recovering, why have prices collapsed?
The past year has brought a welcome surge in investment and growth for the renewable energy industry — with one very large exception: biofuels.
OPEC is producing one million barrels more than the official target OPEC ministers agreed to last week.
