You are right. Anything is temporary.

Also, it is not clear that continuing our motoring ways is the best use of resources.

Hi Majorian,

I'm working on a post about T. Boon's idea for CNG powered cars, and you are correct. If you power all 134 million passenger vehicles with CNG, it would overwhelm our current production. But if you use plug-in hybrid CNG cars (CNGPIH - bad acronyms strike again!), then you only need about 10% to 15% more gas after 20 to 25 years, which is not too bad (time required to replace 134 M cars at current scrapping rate of 5.8 million cars/year).

I see at least two potential problems with a only CNG-auto approach:

1) If you invest lots of $$ in a CNG vehicle infrastructure, then you've got to live with it for awhile, otherwise, you'll have to pay in $$ AND energy to build a different one. So that implies that the car of the future would be either a CNG/biofuel dual fuel model, or you go in the direction bio-CNG as a replacement for oil/gasoline. I'm not sure CNGPIH only is the way to go.

2) Natural gas is now the lifeboat of choice for many, power plant folks included. Using the EIA’s data for proposed power plants, I calculate that between now and 2015, about 6.3 TCF additional will be needed to power them plants (see my response to Gail below). When you start to add all of this on to CNG's back, it makes me nervous, especially if we don't have a clear picture of what future gas supplies will be.

However, if CNGPIH’s are part of a balanced solution and/or peak oil strikes with a vengeance before we are ready, then CNGPIH’s would be a easy way to handle part of the loss until we can find and produce bio-fuels in sufficient quantities. - SMH