liquid natural gas future demand21 Jul 2015 21:21
john Hofmeister: I think we're going to need a crisis. I'm sorry to say that, but the only way to move the political system in the United States of America to help enable this to happen is in the face of a crisis. And here's the crisis: the crisis will be $5 a gallon gasoline in the 2017 to 2018 time frame because there's just not going to be enough oil in the world to meet the growing demand. Remember, by 2020, we're going to need 100 million barrels a day of oil to meet the demand. Most people agree with that statistic. A hundred million barrels by 2020. What we don't know how to do is get from 93 million to 100 million. We know how to produce 93 million; we don't know how to get the next 7 additional million barrels a day. Nobody's plans have that baked in. So as we go through the 2017 to 2018 timeframe, so 2017, 2018, and the price keeps rising, we don't seem to be able to catch up with the price rises. That's going to create the crisis at the pocketbook, which will finally, I hope, drive these politicians – now, I hope it's a year earlier. I hope that the candidates for president in 2016, both the Democratic and the Republican candidates, have to explain to the nation, "Why have prices risen so much, and what have you done about it?" Because I submit that they will have done nothing between now and 2016 on the natural gas front or on the oil front to help move the nation to more security. And so you're absolutely correct that the answer is natural gas, whether it's CNG or LNG for trucking, whether it's ethanol or methanol for natural gas for personal vehicles, automobiles, we should be moving at record speed to build the infrastructure, to build the capability, to switch from oil to natural gas, because there's just not going to be enough oil, as we move towards the end of this decade, to satisfy the world, and why should we be victimized by high oil prices when we, as a country, have so much natural gas, we don't even know how much we have? Because the number keeps inflating, keeps rising, because we keep finding ways to produce more and more and more. And it's going to be cheaper than oil for decades to come. So it's shame on us if we don't get behind the natural gas as an alternative fuel to oil as rapidly as we possibly can, and there's no time like the present to begin that process.
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