My personal relationship with fuel began on a Cub Scout field trip. I was 10, it was raining with the relative humidity nudging the dreaded three-figure barrier, and my task was to start a fire using locally procured tinder and a fire bow that was to be constructed on the spot and based on drawings in a soggy field manual.

It was blisters, though, that finally won. In the end, the scoutmaster, Mr. Fendler—similarly unsuccessful in the time-honored ways of woodsmanship—brought out a propane stove and overcame the challenge with several stokes of the pump handle and the good offices of a Zippo lighter. The lesson of the moment was that biomass may be nice, but it is no match for the stuff nature has transformed over eons to long-chain hydrocarbons.

Later that evening, as the wonderful moth-attracting Coleman Lantern whistled merrily away, I read in my treasured copy of Popular Mechanics how the energy source just recently demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was going to make even the propane stove, Zippo lighter, and gas lantern as obsolete as the fire bow and wood shavings.

Well it’s been nearly 60 years and we’re still waiting for the promise of the mass defect curve to fulfill itself. Waiting for what—hydrogen? Or maybe a secret blend of carbon and hyperbole that will not only provide for our next inexhaustible supply of fuel but also rid the skies of smog, the waterways of sediment, and the seas of E. coli. In the meantime, we’ve dug up enough coal to build a highway to Mars, pumped enough gas to fuel a convoy of big rigs to Alpha Centauri, and managed to outstrip what was until fairly recently touted to be an inexhaustible supply of locally available natural gas. So what’s next?

Terminal Madness
What do Algeria, Angola, Indonesia, Libya, and Nigeria have in common? If you say, “They don’t think too highly of the US,” you're spot on. Sad but true, these folks join some other, more famous countries in having to deal with us but hoping to see us toppled from our lofty roost. Well, they may get the chance to take a more active part in effecting that desire in the future. “Howzat?” you ask. Try LNG.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), domestic gas production will increase less rapidly than both consumption and marginal production costs. This opens the door to LNG, whose production costs are both lower and perhaps even decreasing. Many energy insiders feel that LNG, which now accounts for less than 5% of all gas usage in the US, will by 2025 satisfy as much as a quarter of the nation’s demand for gas. Global politics aside, this vision establishes transportation, storage, and delivery as the practical concerns of merit, but are they door-slammers?

Apparently not to such visionaries as Sempra Energy, BG Group, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell, who began pouring big bucks into their LNG programs a decade ago. There are at present four LNG import terminals in the US, to which, according to EIA, another three could be added in the next five years. Indeed nearly half-a-hundred likely candidates are under consideration because of their proximity to population centers. Opposition to the proliferation of LNG terminals and transport vessels exists but is just as likely to fail as a result of our nation’s unquenchable thirst for energy.

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy?
So even though all the technical and political challenges are likely to be met, still it feels to me as if we’re investing in what is in essence a stopgap program. The specter of stranded investment is one thing, but what bothers me is that by fast-tracking LNG we are effectively shuffling renewables off to sidings where they will continue to face commercialization’s “valley of death” for another decade or two.

As I watch LNG emerge from the ashes of the petroleum and CNG dynasties, I become more and more convinced that we should draft Yogi Berra to become our energy czar just long enough for him to come in, look around for a moment, shake his head in wonderment and issue his oft-quoted “déjà vu all over again” pronouncement.

DE - May/June 2006