Posted on 08/27/2012 4:21:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
That is a great idea. I heat with fuel oil at my current home. My contract for this winter heating season is $3.49/gallon. This equalts to about $2800 to heat my 2400 sq. ft house.
However, NG requires a pipeline to be bulit in front of my house in its current form. This will not happen anytime soon. They are more likely to build a pipeline to a new subdivison because they will then get 100% of the houses as new customers. If they build a pipeline along my road, they may only get 50% of the houses to connect. Therefore, unless NG can be liquified , so that it can be tranported by tanker truck and then stored in a tank on my property, it will not be a potential fuel for people like me anytime soon.
So I am stick with oil and the wood stove. That is why pellet stoves are good sellers around here. They are about a 5-6 year payoff. They have drawbacks too. Such as , where do you store the the 4-5 pallets of pellets in a dry place that you will need this winter. They are also noisy and need electricity to operate.
Coal is actually making a comeback because it is even cheaper than NG. I looked at a new hot water boiler/furnace at last winters homeshow. It was a duel fuel unit. It burned anthracite pellitized washed coal or heating oil. It had a hooper that could hold about 3-4 days of coal. With the flick of a switch you could change it over to fuel oil. The sales point was you could store the coal outside. It is a mineral. It doesn’t matter if it gets wet. It is actually wet in the bag to reduce the dust.
Obviously, I have been contemplating all these alternative methods of home heating ever since the spike in heating oil prices in the last 10 years. I have already added as much insulation, new doors and windows, etc. to make my house as efficint as possible. The crazy thing is that heating oil used to always run about a $1/gallon less than gasoline. Keep in mind there is no state or federal tax of $.40-.70/gallon on heating oil like there is on gasoline or diesel. In the last 5 years it has been has been the same price as unleaded gas or higher in the winter. The other fact is it costs a lot less to make heating oil. It is junk. It is basically like kerosine. It should be lot less.
Correct, DRILL BABY,DRILL for oil that is..
Sorry for all the spelling errors. I should have checked before I posted.
No pipeline required for LPG (propane) it is delivered by truck just like your fuel oil. Burns as clean as NG, and is in fact made from waste products of NG and gasoline refining.
Current retail price in my area is $1.60 a gal.
IMO, fuel oil for home heating is an insane option.
Co-products, not considered waste at $55~60/barrel for the wholesale price and $120/barrel for the final sale price.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wfr_a_EPLLPA_PWR_dpgal_m.htm
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wfr_a_EPLLPA_PRS_dpgal_m.htm
Some wells are being drilled for natural gas liquids like propane, butane and consider the Natural Gas as a side product.
I agree. At a 50:1 price differential, it seems like a quick payoff in increasing the NG distribution infrastructure. It is likely that a case could be made at 6:1. From stats I’ve seen, between 8 and 9 million homes use over 5 billion gallons of fuel oil per year. About 80% of the homes using fuel oil are in the northeast which is a small area when compared to the entire US. This would free up a lot of fuel for transport.
Agreed, oil is an insane option now. However, in 1972 when my house was built it was by far the cheapest. There were a lot of houses built in NH in the mid 1970’s that had electic baseboard heat. Most of those houses were converted to oil or propane in the 1980s or 90s. When I bought this house 15 years ago, oil was still the cheapest. It has only been the last 5-6 years that it has gone to a premium of propane.
When(not if)I replace my current furnace, I most likey will convert to propane.
Buy your own tank and you can shop around for the cheapest price, rather than being tied to one company and tank rental and bloated prices.
If you can buy a used 1000 gal tank you can sometimes get your gas wholesale.
Used tanks are easy to find and quite cheap. You will more than save the price of the tank in lower fuel price the first year.
Natural Gas, and propane, only make sense in large displacement engines operating in stop and go city driving. The savings evaporate when cruising down a highway
My wife worked for a utility that had NG flex vehicles. She drove one all day, every day. They were Dakota pick ups, because they needed somewhere to put the huge NG tank. We have a huge hill, (3 miles?), in our town and she would have to switch over to gasoline to go up it. The vehicle had no power on NG. Also it had no range. I forget those details, but you had to keep switching back to gasoline when you ran out of NG.
They have since gotten rid of all those vehicles. The fueling station gathers dust. EPIC FAIL!
Actually, it is not. It is significantly cheaper per gallon, but fuel oil has ~60% more BTU’s per gallon. Assuming similar efficiencies in the burners:
$2.868 Propane at 71,000 BTU/gallon is 4.0¢ per thousand BTU.
$4.104 Fuel Oil at 115,000 BTU/gallon is 3.6¢ per thousand BTU.
Just like ethanol to gasoline, not all fuels are created equal. Propane is relatively expensive fuel, especially compared to natural gas.
Fuel Oil Price http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wfr_a_EPD2F_PRS_dpgal_m.htm
Propane Price
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wfr_a_EPLLPA_PRS_dpgal_m.htm
At the same time period (March 2012), Residential Natural Gas averaged $10.36 per 1,000 cu ft which equates to 1.0¢ per 1,000 BTU.
Except for the fact that I pay $1.60, not the $2.86 you use to figure costs.
Natural gas has been used in cars for years.One can still obtain conversion kits.
I remember cars in the 50’s having them.
I used the national average. There is plenty of variation in the price. At that same time period, the Central East coast was $3.50 a gallon.
I have never heard him advocate that taxpayers pay for the transition. It seems likely that the transitional savings will be adequate to justify the costs involved in the change.
The market profitability will permit the infrastructure requirements to be developed.
Pickens, Koch spar over natural gas subsidies
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/pickens-koch-spar-over-natural-gas-subsidies/2011/05/20/AFVjez7G_blog.html
The T. Boone Pickens Earmark Bill (Ron Paul Co-Sponsors Taxpayer Boondoggle)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2719999/posts
T. Boone Pickens has a federal subsidy beef with the Koch brothers over natural gas, ethanol
http://green.autoblog.com/2011/11/25/t-boone-pickens-federal-subsidy-koch-brothers-cng-ethanol/
My current supplier said the true wholesale to the distributors is about .70-.80 cents a gal.
I didn't look up the NYSE traded price, but I think the current traded price is less than last years and that was in the .70 cent range.
The infrastructure is coming. But the industry does not want the gov't to get invovled.
So, the primary focus is first on fleet users, municipal vehicles (garbage trucks, buses, etc) and truck lines.
Once they have refilling stations, it will spread from there to truck stops and along interstates.
Eventually, like diesel, it will be available at nearly every station.
Trust in the market to make it happen right.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.