How big is it?

Experts now believe that the country has far more natural gas at its disposal than anyone thought three or four years ago. The revised estimates are largely due to advanced drilling techniques that make it economically feasible to extract the fuel from shale. And while the Marcellus [shale formation] is the most recently discovered and possibly the largest shale-gas deposit, others are scattered throughout the country. The U.S. consumes about 23 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas a year, according to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency (EIA). The Potential Gas Committee (PGC), an organization headquartered at the Colorado School of Mines, put the country's potential natural-gas resources at 1,836 TCF in a biennial assessment released in June. That's 39 percent higher than its estimate of two years earlier. Add to that the 238 TCF that the EIA has calculated in "proved reserves" (the gas that can be produced given existing economic conditions) and the PGC pegs the future supply at 2,074 TCF. In other words, there is enough natural gas to supply the country for 90 years at current consumption rates. Even if we used natural gas to totally replace coal in generating electricity, domestic supplies would last for 50 years.

Most of the chatter about natural gas abundance concerns its potential for replacement of liquid fuels - to diminish imported oil issues - and replacement of coal to diminish carbon emissions and particulate pollution.

From an agricultural perspective it looks a bit different. Natural gas is used for heat and power in ag but it is also used for some fixed internal combustion engines, such as water pumps, as well as mobile ICEs on some smaller trucks, fork lifts, skid steers and such. It is the main feed stock for the synthesis of the majority of nitrogen fertilizers since it is rich in hydrogen - CH4. A large and secure supply of natural gas is very encouraging.

Still, not all experts think it's wise to rapidly expand the market for natural gas. Simply put, they worry that the country could become addicted to yet another fossil fuel--one that could turn out, over the long term, to be far less abundant and more expensive than many now predict.

The experience of Great Britain in the late 1980s provides a sobering example. The country was adjacent to an enormous, underdeveloped resource of natural gas in the North Sea. At the time, the Conservative government headed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was fighting with the coal miners, and natural gas looked like an economically and politically attractive fuel. So government and industry pushed forward with what became known as the "dash for gas," allowing the use of that fuel in power plants for the first time. The country's coal industry all but disappeared, and nuclear power was largely neglected. "The whole country moved very rapidly toward building new gas-fired power stations," recalls Tony Meggs, who was then an executive at BP responsible for a building an export pipeline for the fuel. "We started exploiting the underdeveloped gas fields, and it was great. We were very happy."

But in retrospect, says Meggs, now a visiting engineer at MIT and codirector of the school's forthcoming report on natural gas, the rapid expansion of the market in Great Britain turned out to be "bad policy." These days, he says, the U.K. imports substantial amounts of the natural gas it depends on for much of its electricity generation; by 2020 it will be forced to import 70 percent, most of it from continental Europe. "So we went from a position of great supplies and security, with everyone saying there's a lot a gas, to a position that from an energy-security perspective is very unattractive," Meggs says. "It is very important that the U.S. doesn't go the same route, expanding markets and using resources inappropriately and then ultimately becoming import-dependent."

Too true. Nuclear power is still the sensible way to generate electricity even if we have abundant natural gas reserves. With nuclear energy we can make natural gas from water and air.

The availability of vast natural-gas resources in the Marcellus shale and similar sediments around the United States has changed energy calculations in a fundamental way. The discovery of this large and seemingly economical new source of fossil fuel has surprised even geologists who have spent their careers studying the shale. Little wonder, then, that policy makers and politicians are just beginning to try to figure out what the discoveries mean.

It's not clear how--or even whether--those responsible for energy policy will take advantage of the opportunity. At best, the newly identified supplies of gas will buy time, providing a chance to reduce greenhouse gases while more innovative technologies are developed and deployed. At worst, the country will burn through large volumes of this fuel only to find that we haven't reduced carbon dioxide emissions very much--and that we've put off investing in research to create cleaner technologies.

The confusion here is the obsession with GHGs. That's not a useful focus for energy policy, it's just a political imperative due to runaway GHG mania whipped up by unthinking opportunists. GHGs are merely one of many issues which must all be handled sensibly.