[goldfinch]

Pickens’ plan would vastly increase the price of NG, which would make my already obscene winter NG bills flat out unaffordable. I’d have to turn off my furnace. No thanks

That is my concern. Natural gas went up by about 30% last year, and earlier, XCel Energy was saying there would be another increase this year.

Pickens plan would increase the demand for natural gas, which would increase the price. Pickens plan would cost me big time.

[mysterio]

It would cost everybody big time. State and federal governments would have to subsidize heating so people wouldn’t freeze to death.

[JDinAustin]

The real answer is converting the coal we can’t mine to clean natural gas, check out the economics for the under ground hydrogasification. Mind everyone that henry hub prices have been as high as $15 mmbtu in july. at a production cost of <$3 mmbtu the profit margin for selling it wholesale at $6+ mmbtu is obscene its only a matter of time before some company starts using this kind of technology. the plus side is to appease the carbon gods the spent gasification chamber can be used to store the CO2 produced making the SNG. since the process produced pure high pressure CO2 the storage costs are reduced.

http://www.hceco.com/HCEI105001.pdf