Opinion. October 17, 2021. Should Natural Gas Pipelines Projects Be Cancelled in the United States

in LeoFinance3 years ago

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The United States of America is by far the number one producer of natural gas in the world. In 2020 its production was almost 50% higher than the one of Russia. Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Ohio are the largest producers.

In spite of this, in the winter of 2018, natural gas had to be imported from Russia in order to satisfy the demands of the Northeastern states due to colder than average temperatures.

The reason for this is that project involving the construction of pipelines, including one from Pennsylvania to the Northeast were cancelled. The cancellation was due to the pressure from environmentalist groups which are against the use of fossil fuels.

In my opinion, although the development of sources of energy not reliant on fossil fuels such as solar or wind is very important, we still are going to rely on fossil fuels for many years. The construction of pipelines from energy producing states to energy needing states would help us alleviate the need from importing natural gas from other countries.

This post is intended to only raise awareness. In order to make actual financial decisions please contact your financial advisor and/or tax advisor prior to making the decision.
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Fossil fuels are very important. However it does not seem to be important in all cases. Despite the fact that America's natural gas production is so high, the dependence on Russia for a region is something to think about. Anyway beautifully written. I really like your opinion.

Thanks for your kind words

Great opinion and good write up. Thanks for sharing and have a wonderful day.

Thanks!

I am not familiar with the pipeline you are talking about, but most of the controversial pipelines I know about are (or were) being built to export natural gas to other countries (where the price is much higher).

The US does not import much from Russia at all: most of the natural gas used in the US comes from cheap US and Canadian sources. US and Canadian gas exporters would prefer to ship their gas to other countries that would pay them more. Obviously this would not be great for natural gas consumers in the US.

When other countries sell their gas to us, I am sure it is not cheap

And there are an abundance of natural gas pipelines in the US for internal gas delivery:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/natural-gas-pipelines.php

How did this transmission and distribution network become so large?
About half of the existing mainline natural gas transmission network and a large portion of the local distribution network were installed in the 1950s and 1960s because consumer demand for natural gas more than doubled following World War II. The distribution network has continued to expand to provide natural gas service to new commercial facilities and housing developments.

Natural gas prices increased substantially between 2003 and 2008. Higher prices gave natural gas producers an incentive to expand development of existing fields and to begin exploration of previously undeveloped natural gas fields. Advances in drilling and production techniques led to increases in production from shale and other tight geologic formations. These increases in production contributed to general declines in natural gas prices since 2009, which in turn contributed to increases in demand for natural gas for electricity generation and by industry. Consequently, new transmission pipelines were constructed and others are being built to link the expanded and new production sources to more consumers around the country, most notably in the Northeast.

The United States now produces nearly all of the natural gas that it uses.
U.S. dry natural gas production in 2020 was about 33.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), an average of about 91.5 billion cubic feet per day and the second-highest annual amount recorded. Most of the production increases since 2005 are the result of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques, notably in shale, sandstone, carbonate, and other tight geologic formations. Natural gas is produced from onshore and offshore natural gas and oil wells and from coal beds. In 2020, U.S. dry natural gas production was about 10% greater than U.S. total natural gas consumption.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-natural-gas-comes-from.php

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To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

Nice and Informative post.

Thanks!

We will go more and more to use renewable energies ... now there is no turning back. In my opinion it will be so.