In a post about "Mad Money" that has already dropped off the board,I p[osted this:

"Been a lot of focus on his show about the huge supplies of natural gas in our country,it's relatively cheap price,that it burns cleaner than other fossil fuels and it's potential as a bridge fuel to other alternative sources of energy that are still being developed. Haven't heard much about that though in the energy policy and cap-and-trade discussions. I live in Texas and about every three months I travel through an area of Texas where a huge natural gas reservoir was discovered and a lot of wells are being drilled that have a minimal effect on the environment. I think we need to do something as a nation to encourage more use of natural gas."

In the gas field in Texas that I was talking about,the wells are vertical wells so there is a minimal effect on the environment. I ran across this article in a Facebook post:

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It has some discussion about "hydrofracking". Not so sure about natural gas as a bridge fuel now. My mind is still open though.

Natural gas extraction is a relatively benign process if it is from a "standard" vertical oil/gas well like in your area (subject to hydrogen sulphide content and a few other factors). Traditional oil/gas reserves are located beneath an impermeable layer of rock. You drill through the impermeable layer to open the gas/oil reservoir and extract it at the rate that the reservoir permits. As the production drops off you can add injection wells around your main well to help force the oil/gas towards your extraction well. As long as the impermeable layer and the other stratas are left intact then it has very little impact on the surrounding area.

But hydrofracking is a nasty and harmful extraction process. It developed as the "normal" injection well process evolved and they discovered that creating fracture networks between the injection and extration wells caused a significant increase in extraction rates. It's bad enough if you happen to be living within the extraction area and your wells become polluted. But if the fractures start linking into a nearby aquifer then the results could be disastrous and long lasting.

I shudder every time I hear one of these "good news" announcements from the Oil companies who make it sound like they've found another easy/cheap source of fuel. In reality these are desperation moves as the remaining oil reserves become harder to access and extract from. Unfortunately the Oil companies will be the last ones to admit (at least publicly) that we are now past peak oil.

I forgot to mention that Natural Gas is actually a good bridging fuel, but we might begin to see a trend towards synthetic gases. There is a lot of research going into coal gasification processes which is good news for America because they have some of the largest coal reserves in the world. As crude becomes more scarce, America will be in a good position for the long haul.

Also the oil companies are leaning towards synthetic gases in the form of catalytic and hydro-cracking as well as several reformate processes which "break" heavy oil components into lighter oil components. Some of these processes create a great deal of hydrogen as a byproduct which is currently just burned as fuel gas within the refineries. There are several plant modifications currently in progress around the world to process and/or react this hydrogen back into the product stream.