Our Slow-Motion Energy Crisis

O K, you’re concerned about skyrocketing energy prices and you favor all those things we all say we favor when the latest price spikes kick off another round of concern. You favor renewables such as wind and solar. You favor hybrid, hydrogen and electric cars, and more full-efficient gas vehicles. Heck, you even favor higher energy prices, because they create the economic conditions for the development of all the above and cause people to conserve in the meantime.

Fine, but can we afford to do nothing to expand today’s energy resources — natural gas and oil — while we conserve and develop tomorrow’s energy resources? What would be the impact on the U.S. economy? What would be the impact on Americans’ jobs and our standard of living? In short, can we be blase about traditional energy supplies?

Consider the cleanest of our traditional energy sources; natural gas. Unlike oil, natural gas is not a commodity traded in the global marketplace, except for small quantities of liquefied gas. It’s traded in local markets. So what we do to produce more natural gas in the United States has a more pronounced impact on U.S. prices than would be the case with oil. It’s also an increasingly integrated market, thanks to the construction of major transmission lines. Unlike in the past, natural gas moves from one region to another. So, what’s produced or not produced off the coast of Louisiana will affect prices in Oregon.

Natural gas prices have doubled for industrial users and small businesses over the past five years nationally, and demand is only going up. The Northwest Gas Association expects demand in the Pacific Northwest to grow 9 percent over next five years.

The Oregonian