Why Natural Gas Vehicles Won't Decrease Oil Dependence

Natural gas is the fossil fuel du jour. At Davos, BP CEO Tony Hayward described unconventional natural gas as a ‘complete game changer’. The rest of the panel agreed. In December Exxon Mobil (XOM) bought XTO Energy for $41bn to access its resource base of 45tcf (trillion cubic feet) of unconventional natty. Some see this as Exxon pivoting away from difficult to find oil into where the future fossil fuel growth will be. America is now apparently awash in a 100 year supply of nat gas. Why not use that for transport and stop the annual outflow of some $300bn out of the American economy, much of it to supposed enemies, all while creating those elusive green jobs?

Seeking Alpha author Michael Fitzsimmons has for a long time been passionately advocating natural gas as a panacea for the prospective peak oil problem. Many here agree, decrying Secretary Chu’s “agnostic” stance towards its use for transport. T. Boone Pickens, in his Pickens’ Plan redux, suggests that by transferring 18 wheelers and buses to natural by 2020 we could cut OPEC import dependence in half. I decided to take a quick look under the hood myself. My straw man will be that the US can stop all oil imports by 2035.

I find graphs are a powerful way to cut through the rhetoric and get down to the quantitative basics so I’ll try supply a few here.

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