The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

Do you ever see a day when nat gas will be embraced by the US govt? Seems like China has become pretty fond of it lately.

not sure what you expect the US fed gov't to do or why but use of natural gas in the US is well 'embraced', e.g. the US accounts for nearly 50% of all natural gas produced by OECD countries and natural gas accounts for ~30% of total power consumption in the US vs only 3% in china. China is shooting to increase NG's share of their energy production to 10% by 2030. I don't think that's a particularly impressive percentage although given the total number of watts they're generating it's a lot of power.

pegging a number on proven NG reserves for China is a dicey game but DOE's numbers are probably as believable as any others. Those numbers are ~300 Tcf in the US vs ~100 Tcf in China. The Chinese reserve estimates could grow tremendously if coal bed methane is included but then those numbers might be ignoring non-trivial details like water availability. Gas in the ground isn't useful if you can't get it out.

these numbers and many others can be fount at: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/China/Background.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/China/Background.html
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/tablebrowser/#release=AEO2011&subject=0-AEO2011&table=1-AEO2011®ion=0-0&cases=ref2011-d120810c
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/China/NaturalGas.html