Now for the refinement — of the argument, not NG, which unlike crude oil requires no refining.
Wrong. NG (Methane) is stripped out of a complex soup of other gasses, including propane, butane, and others. It is done at gas plants. listed.
The SEC makes it a federal felony for an energy company to claim gas reserves as assets if they’re not determined by obsolete technology, i.e., you have to drill a hole. Modern 3D seismic methods get a far better picture of an NG reservoir — but since you don't have to drill a hole, whatever reserves are found by 3DS, the SEC won’t allow it.
Until you drill a hole, you do not know what is there, or if quirks of the reservoir or fluids therein will stymie production efforts. While one (producing) well might prove out potential reserves on a given structure or in a reservoir, no holes=a prospect, not reserves.
On what little land they can explore, with 3DS they are discovering huge amounts in “low-permeability reservoirs” — some 460 tcf (trillion cubic feet), tripling alone current US gas reserves.
Not without a well you don't. You just triple low permeability gas prospects, not reserves.
That’s because NG is 80 percent hydrogen. There are 4 atoms of hydrogen for every one atom of carbon in NG. There are only 2 atoms of hydrogen for every one atom of carbon in regular gas. Thus NG emits much less carbon in the atmosphere.
Most percentage reckoning is done by weight. Four hydrogen atoms @ 1, one carbon atom at 12, and I get 25% Hydrogen for a Methane molecule by weight, not 80%.
I'll leave adressing his comments about selling Alaskan oil to Japan to the Alsaka hands, but IIRC, that does not happen any more, and has not for years.
I can see where whole neighborhoods will have to re-light their pilot lights as they all try to top off the car at once, dropping the line pressure in their area.
Further, no one has addressed the risk of explosion or fire from having so many active fueling stations in a neighbor hood.
One more thing. I worked for a company in the early '80 which ran its fleet on gasoline/propane dual fuel engines. While I can say that it does burn cleaner, is easier on engines, and gives greater range, that does not always come without complications. In extremely cold weather (-20 and colder), the vehicles had to be started on gasoline and warmed up before running them on propane.
Despite training, minor frostbite injuries were pretty common when people filled the vehicles up with liquid propane.
Not at normal regulated (1/2 psig) city gas pressures.
I have an old physics book that contains a table on the percentages of other constituent gases in natural gas by location; a field near Titusville, Pa. where oil was first exploited commercially is over 85% propane and the appliances have to have proportionately sized orifices for proper operation in the servicing area.
For energy production, what counts is the number of atoms times the amount of energy each type produces when oxidized. The one carbon atom in the methane molecule generates less energy when oxidized than the 4 hydrogen atoms. See here