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Americas:Natural gas: From household to industrial fuel in US

https://www.chemnet.com   May 05,2011 commodityonline
Natural gas market is an oversupplied one with considerable demand, almost 40 percent, originating from the households of US for heating purposes. However, the rising fuel costs and the need for alternate fuels are expected to raise the stature of natural gas from a household fuel to that of an industrial one.

A report from the US Potential Gas Committee (PGC) showed that inventories of natural gas are at a record high of 1898 trillion cubic feet. This oversupply has the potential to place natural gas in a strategic position in the future so as to fuel ever expanding power generation sector.

U.S is a country that possesses almost a quarter of the total recoverable coal deposits and nearly half of the energy is generated from coal. It is also known that a little more than a quarter of the green-house emissions result from coal power generation technologies in US. Being so, natural gas, which emits 45 percent lesser carbon dioxide than coal, will be considered the ideal replacement for coal for power generation.

Operations at older coal power plants are expected to be wound up and will result in higher demand for natural gas. According to the Gas Technology Institute, the demand for natural gas is estimated to rise towards 24-26 trillion cubic feet from the previous 22.1 trillion cubic feet in 2010. (Business wire)
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