As an oil executive and an American, I also find the course being pursued in Washington, DC, to be energy suicide (OGJ, Mar. 9, 2009, p. 68). I think it’s time for Atlas to shrug.
I see Transocean is moving corporate headquarters to Switzerland, and Noble is reincorporating there and considering a transfer of management. Maybe if ExxonMobil notifies Washington that it will not be able to flourish under this lunacy and will have to cease being a US-based company, they’ll get it.
Jerry Rothouse
Austin
CNG vehicles have niche
Re: Nick Snow’s fine reporting of Sen. Harry Reid’s press conference on compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles (OGJ, Mar. 2, 2009, p. 28).
Our family owns and operates a 2004 Honda natural gas vehicle (NGV). We love the car for its low operating costs and its low local emissions. While natural gas burns clean, the exploration, production, and transportation require liquid hydrocarbons and coal; NGVs only displace some of the pollution. Also, since our NGV has only a 200 mile range, my wife typically refuels it every 2-3 days and rarely strays far from the limited refueling stations. The fuel economy (about 30 mpg) is less than a comparably sized Jetta Diesel (about 40 mpg), and the expensive 3,600 psi tank has a life expectancy of only 15 years.
We are also investors in oil and gas exploration, drilling, and production—investments with minimal return for the risk, particularly at the present low prices. Our partners have had little success in finding large gas fields, not surprising when peak natural gas production in the lower 48 states occurred 35 years ago (1973). Based on this and on what I understand about the short lives of shale wells, I cannot be optimistic about long-term supply.
NGVs have a niche to displace diesel and gasoline in local transportation: buses, trucks, and fleet vehicles that never stray far from a filling station and can be filled overnight in their fleet garages, so as not to overload the present infrastructure. Adding additional infrastructure to fuel large fleets of NGVs may prove wasteful and uneconomical if the supply is not adequate for the next 30 years. Remaining large sources of natural gas are in unfriendly countries and would have to be imported as LNG.
Decision-makers need to consult both with people who have expertise and experience in the day-to-day operation of NGVs and with natural gas supply specialists to intelligently determine the wisdom of large-scale expansion of the NGV fleet.
Richard J. McDonald, PhD (physics)
San Francisco
