.... so is this good news for consumers, bad news for producers, or former President Bush’s fault?
There is never too much energy available. And if we have to use “fossil fuels”, then natural gas is IMMEDIATELY available, relatively easy to transport (now that the infrastructure is in place), and may be applied to a wide range of productive facilities. As a standby for additional electricity generation, natural-gas fired turbines driving power generation dynamos can come on line about as fast as they can get spooled up, something that nuclear power and most coal-fired steam plants cannot do. Even hydro power does not respond as fast, as it takes a while for the surge of water from the dam to get to the dynamo. Natural gass fired turbines also have the virtue of being placed closely enough to the point of power consumption, there is less need of stringing sometimes hundreds of mile of high-tension lines. Less distance the power is transmitted, the more power is available for consumption per unit of fuel burned.
As a home heating fuel, natural gas beats heating oil just about any way you can think of, again with ease of distribution (just pipe it in and turn open the valve), and in quantity it is still relatively cheaper and more reliable on the delivery than heating oil.
As a motor fuel, natural gas is about the cleanest burning fuel that can be put through an internal combustion engine, with NO significant carbon deposits and a much cleaner exhaust. It even works well in Diesels, no soot and minimal odor. It does have the disadvantage of not being a liquid at normal ambient temperatures. Natural gas liquefies at minus 160 degrees Celsius, and until somebody can come up with a “freeze ray”, liquified natural gas as a motor fuel will not be an option. Natural gas would work just fine in a stationary unit.
There is a minimal fraction of natural gas that includes butane and propane, both of which can be and have been used as motor fuels with relatively simple handling techniques, as they both are liquids under pressure at normal ambient temperatures. Some forty years ago, propane was so cheap as a fuel, it was widely used in powering agricultural machinery, but fell out of favor as most of the farm machinery was powered by Diesel, using the cheap distillates from petroleum that were not good enough for gasoline.
If gasoline was just coming on the market now as a fuel for automobiles, it would no doubt be banned because of the inherent dangers of handling gasoline. Over the years, sufficient precautions have been built into the production, storage, delivery and dispensing of gasoline, that most, not all, of the objections to its use have been overcome.
If you want jobs and you want prosperity and you want less debt use our lands and our oceans to produce jobs and the things the world needs.