I wrote about the tough times in America’s oil patch and how much tougher they have become since the coronavirus knocked about a fifth off of crude prices.
The oil market is more accustomed to dealing with supply shocks than collapses in demand. While strategic reserves can ease shortages, even the most eager Fed chairman or Treasury secretary can’t create demand for a million barrels of oil a day by pushing a button—not that they would agitate for higher pump prices anyway.
I wrote about a hot topic – literally. Every day enough natural gas is burned off to fuel Germany, France, and Belgium combined. It contributes about 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The reasons for this tremendous waste are complicated, but there is much that can be done.
I’ll admit that when I heard U.S. official call natural gas exports ‘molecules of freedom,” I thought it was pretty stupid. But a little research shows that the fuel has inspired people for millennia.
There is something in the air these days in Washington: methane with a smattering of higher alkanes and perhaps a little hydrogen sulfide.
WSJ.com 5/20/2019
Booming U.S. natural-gas production has put a swagger in the step of government officials now that the fuel is being exported around the world in liquefied form. Some see it as a political lever for democracy as much as an economic boon. The U.S. undersecretary of energy sparked much hilarity this week when he referred to the fuel as “freedom gas”—a moniker that reminded many of Iraq war era “freedom fries.”
But natural gas, once called “fossil gas,” was inspiring people way before the fracking boom. Historians surmise that a lightning strike on Mount Parnassus, where it may have seeped from the ground, created the flame that inspired the Oracle of Delphi. Some attribute the burning bush that Moses encountered in the wilderness to a similar phenomenon and also pillars of fire that played a role in Persia’s ancient religion.
Millennia later, then, why shouldn’t the miraculous boom in U.S. gas output, with all its ramifications, inspire some flowery language?
Spencer Jakab 