Minor Details

This morning, the Washington Post has a story about how high prices for natural gas has prompted new efforts to find and deliver more supplies to Americans:

Soaring energy prices and profits have revived plans for two massive pipelines -- the biggest private construction projects in North America -- to bring natural gas hundreds of miles south from the frozen Arctic Ocean, through vast untouched forests and under wild rivers, to the United States.

The plans would flood isolated areas of Alaska and Canada with thousands of construction workers, pump billions of dollars into poor native economies, and bring the roar of heavy cranes and bulldozers to pristine areas where it is now quiet enough to hear the hoots of snowy owls and the rustle of pine boughs.

The projects are crucial to keep up with the growing thirst for energy in the United States, say oil company officials and energy analysts. Supporters and opponents agree that the projects would affect Canada's sparsely populated north on a scale larger than the Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s, and unleash a rush of new exploration and drilling.

Putting aside the questions for a moment about the habitat damage caused by new pipeline corridors, if natural gas is getting scarce, shouldn’t one priority be to conserve it for producing chemicals, such as fertilizer (so that we don’t starve in an effort to stay warm)? If you’re not aware of this already, nitrogenous agriculture fertilizers are produced using ammonia, and most of the ammonia used in this country is produced from natural gas.

Total annual natural gas consumption in the U.S. is currently around 2.2E+13 cubic feet. Non-fuel (i.e. feedstock) uses were reported to be 6.6E+11 cubic feet during the most recent Energy Information Administration survey of manufacturing energy consumption. Feedstock uses for producing nitrogenous fertilizers were reported to be 2.9E+11 cubic feet. So, total feedstock and fertilizer production uses of natural gas currently are only around 3 and 1.3 percent of total consumption. While it’s not a cause for alarm yet, demand for natural gas is forecasted to increase. So, if we don’t start thinking about these things now, when does that thinking happen?