Doom

While some see doom as the outcome if the United States fails to institute a national policy on carbon dioxide emissions or a renewable portfolio standard for power generation, a cadre of researchers predicts quite the opposite, and it’s mostly thanks to the country’s recently found abundance of natural gas, the role of gas in power generation, and electric vehicles.

Questioning whether the natural gas market is currently in a “doom & gloom” or “demand boom” period, Raymond James analyst J. Marshall Adkins said one year after Hurricane Katrina’s devastation there should be a “substantial” year-over-year natural gas demand increase.

A veto next month of the Compass Port Clean Energy LNG import terminal by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley could doom the project, according to a ConocoPhillips official, because it would force the company to restart the application process, causing a lengthy delay, and would require a switch to a closed-loop vaporization model that could double the cost of operations over a 20-year period.

Producers predicting gloom and doom for gas supply based on 1997reserve replacement estimates are being way too pessimistic,according to Tom Woods, Ziff Energy Group vice president for U.S.gas services. He told attendees at GasMart/Power ’98 Wednesday inNew Orleans the reason gas prices have been so high is that themarket is spooked. “How much of what we are seeing is the substanceof what is occurring and how much of what we are seeing is reallythe form it is taking because of some change maybe in industrybooking practices? I would suggest to you that industry bookingpractices are beginning to resemble a more traditional inventoryapproach to life rather than the very long-term reserve toproduction ratios that we traditionally used to have in terms ofrecovery…”