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44 comments on A different view of the gas situation

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karlof1 on December 6, 2005 - 1:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Once again the question must be asked: Are the $Trillions needed for extensive LNG importation facilities and vessels worth the investmet for a resource that will be exhausted in 20-30 years? Further, any realistic impact from increased LNG importation is unlikely to be seen for at least 5+ years as the Chinese have already tied up the shipyards with the contracts to supply their 100+ fleet of LNG tankers. A last major consideration is what might all the vast infrastructure be turned into once the end of its relatively short lifetime is reached? To me, it looks like one of the biggest wastes of materials ever given the massive opportunity cost loss from the road not taken.
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Bubba on December 6, 2005 - 9:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There are still massive amounts of stranded natural gas around the world. The largest accumulation of hydrocarbons in the world is North Field in Qatar - bigger than the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia.  Little of this has been developed and produced because of lack of proximity to markets.  

Ultimately the volume of global natural gas is limited, just like oil.  However, as a resource it is much less depleted at this point in time.  

The US can pony up and start playing the LNG game, or it can sit it out and deplete what little we have left.

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LevinK on December 7, 2005 - 12:52pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
IMO the fact that maybe 70-80% of NG left in the world is located in several distant fields in Qatar and Russia must be a strong argument against investing NG anymore.

I see some kind of "infrastructure idoling" going on these days that can potentially kill us. The fact that billions have been invested in NG pipelines, NG power plants etc. will lead to more billions invested in LNG so that we could keep our previous invesments alive; The result will be that it will become increasingly difficult to jump off the fossil fuel wagon as we invest more and more in an industry bound to yeild less and less returns.

The obvious alternative is to build a totally new infrastructure but when shall we gather the political will to do it?? I think that in the longer term NG will turn to be the worse problem than oil, as the time to build the alternative infrastructure (a chain of nuclear plants) is slowly ticking away...

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44 comments on A different view of the gas situation

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