Over the last couple years we have all heard of the abundance of natural gas locked in shale rock in the US and Canada. As a cleaner fossil fuel, this abundent resource underscores the important role it can play in the North American energy mix.
A recent report by the Potential Gas Committee, a group of industry, government, and academic volunteers, estimating that the US has 1,836 trillion cubic feet of potential natural gas. The estimate is up from 1,321 trillion cubic feet two years ago. In Canada, the Horn River and Montney basin have dramatically increased Canada’s reserves as well giving more support for using this cleaner, secure and abundant resource.
As a first step, goverment and commercial vehicles fleets should convert to natural gas. Due to the lack of convenient distribution it is natural gas is not yet practicle for most consumers. However, with fleet vehicles fill up stations are easily installed onsite where the fleet vehicles are stored and maintained. Back in March, AT&T set an example for governments and other large commercial fleet operators to follow when they announced the largest conversion of a commercial fleet to natural gas. See Horn River News: “AT&T to invest in 8,000 natural gas vehicles”.
This first step of conversion would have a measurable impact on emissions. In the case of AT&T, they estimate the their investment in alternative energy vehicles will save 49 million gallons of gasoline and reduce carbon emissions by 211,000 metric tons over the 10-year deployment period.
Bloomberg News (via LA Times) Potential U.S. natural gas reserves rise 39%
Pingback: Four reasons natural gas prices will not stay depressed « Horn River News