A broad-brush picture of the global supply of natural gas shows that there’s plenty of fuel, so much so that gas may soon be the dominant fuel for producing electricity, according to Leonardo Maugeri, senior executive vice president of Eni S.p.A, a leading energy company and a founding member of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI).
“Gas is the easiest option” for answering increasing concerns about fuel availability, price, distribution, and greenhouse warming, Maugeri told his audience at a MITEI-sponsored seminar. Maugeri is a member of the MITEI external advisory board, and his topic at the December 14 event was “All That Gas…”
Because of its competitive price, availability, and clean-burning qualities, he predicted, “natural gas is set to become the number-one energy source over the course of this century.”
The advent of plentiful natural gas is a recent and sudden development, he explained, driven in part by a major technological advance: the ability to fracture “tight” shale deposits to let trapped gas be affordably extracted. That has substantially changed the energy future here in the United States, and probably also abroad.
In this nation alone, Maugeri added, the proven supply of gas is now so huge there’s enough to last more than a century at present usage rates, with probably much more yet to be found both here and abroad.
He did warn, however, there are some environmental concerns. For example, it takes significant amounts of water—pumped at high pressure into the underground shales—to create the factures that liberate trapped gas. Some of that water may surface as a pollutant, causing its own set of environmental problems. He noted, however, that water issues for natural gas are no greater than and sometime less than for the alternatives.
“NIMBY (not in my backyard) is always around the corner” when it comes to major developments that are likely to involve pollutants, Maugeri said.
He also noted that the availability of so much gas has disrupted today’s global energy scenario, altering America’s plans to import liquefied natural gas from the Middle East and Africa. It is far cheaper to transport gas via pipelines from nearby domestic sources compared to using LNG tankers to bring it in from half a world away. And the price of natural gas is now high enough to spur domestic exploration and development.
Also, because burning natural gas is far less polluting than coal and oil for running power plants, it should become the dominant fuel as stronger emissions controls are imposed on the electric power industry. In terms of greenhouse emissions, natural gas is a far better choice than coal and oil, although less favorable than nuclear, which in use emits no heat-trapping gases. However, the construction of new nuclear power plants is an expensive and slow process burdened with regulatory hurdles and public fears, so it will be years before nuclear can actually compete with gas.
Historically, gas has been a poor cousin of the energy industry, a bothersome by-product of oil production. “It has been a very tiring and long journey” from natural gas being considered a curse to becoming a promising fuel for the future, he said.
Natural gas has traditionally been a nuisance, getting in the way of oil production, generally being burned off (flared), vented directly into the air, or re-injected into the ground to maintain oil well pressure. That is still happening, especially in the Middle East’s oil fields, although venting is now less common. Maugeri said gas released directly into the air is a far more potent greenhouse agent than the carbon dioxide that comes from flaring natural gas, although direct methane releases have a much shorter life span in the atmosphere than does carbon dioxide.
Overseas, the technologies required to fracture tight gas deposits are less well developed, and exploratory testing has only recently begun, especially in Northern Europe. Maugeri said that Europe’s major gas supply source, Russia, “has many, many [unconventional gas] options and it’s not even pursuing them right now.”
Asked about chances that arctic regions will be explored and developed for energy supplies, he replied: “I think that is very far away,” because the costs of development in the very cold regions are far higher than other energy sources.