US gas.......natural and political!

I was asked for a view on the demand by a Tea Party politician to ban the export of gas from the US. Here is the response by Hay Texas.

As for selling American gas, I have no objection and believe my fellow countrymen would largely agree. Prior to such action, however, it would be prudent and sensible for us to embark upon a gasification of America project whereby we construct the infrastructure needed to convert oil and coal-fired power plants to natural gas, lay more pipelines, construct new gas-fired power plants and accelerate the conversion to liquefied gas powered engines for cars, buses and trucks along with the facilities needed to refuel. This effort would also include  processing plants to extract gas from sand and shale.

One major impact of this move would be to dramatically lower the demand for gasoline and, in principle, the price as well. It would also act as a model for other nations to follow and thereby reduce their dependence on gasoline to say nothing of the positive environmental impacts. I imagine we would also begin the large-scale extraction of huge amounts of higher end carbon products from raw gasoline such as ethane, propane and butane. There is no question in my mind that gasification programs for the USA are well advanced from technical, environmental and financial perspectives.

There is also no question that legislators will take their cut in taxes and whatever other perquisites they might engineer including those channeled through oil and gas industry lobbyists. If orchestrated correctly, the gas boom in the USA will be a major win for everyone. We will go from famine to feast in jobs and consumer spending. Nobody will listen to those who preach prudence and saving for a rainy day. They never do.

Meanwhile, we will suffer through the present economic doldrums with the larger and larger prospect of our experiencing a slow motion train wreck. The Euro has to tumble eventually so we may as well plan on it and anticipate what I expect to be a reduced Eurozone consisting of Northern European countries. Southern Europe will survive and will return to its Club Med persona along with its regional linguistic, cultural and culinary charm. A sigh of relief from out indigent friends will be audible when they collectively realize they are no longer compelled to become German.

Once a new free market equilibrium is reached, the world will stop having convulsions over its economic fate and the scourges of globalization. This will happen fairly quickly in the US, especially with our new found soft landing in the form of natural gas all over the place. We will return to our excesses and the fact that fat cats spend $10,000 on a new toilette seat for their trophy wives will no longer matter.