Give it the gas

On the road to a cleaner energy future, natural gas offers an alternative route

Every few weeks, it seems, fresh news arrives telling of impressive discoveries of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, an area that, until recently, was viewed as well worked over and unlikely to yield any new bonanzas.

Last September brought word of a giant Gulf oil field reeled in by British Petroleum. And the latest Gulf headline-maker is a potentially major gas play offshore Louisiana that appears likely to add new trillions of cubic feet of gas to growing domestic reserves of the cleanest-burning carbon fuel.

So much for worked over. The new take on the Gulf is decidedly more optimistic.

When coupled with discoveries of huge new reserves of natural gas across Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, and in Colorado and Pennsylvania and West Virginia, this latest projected Gulf find makes natural gas a truly abundant fuel for this country.

Houston Chronicle