Apparently the Natural Gas Act (HR 1835, S 1408) votes will be delayed. Originally, these bills were expected to be voted on by the end of May. Congress is now saying that they may take up Immigration Reform before they can consider any energy legislation.
This is hugely disappointing. The Natural Gas Act could be the most significant economic legislation at a time when the country needs to stimulate our economy to create jobs. Isn’t this Barack Obama’s top priority?
The Natural Gas Act would:
- Provide tax incentives to promote the use of natural gas vehicles particularly heavy duty vehicles like trucks.
- Promote the domestic production of natural gas vehicles by allowing manufacturers to expense the cost of building new manufacturing capacity.
- Provide tax credits for the installation of natural gas pumps at service stations and for at-home fueling systems.
- Provide tax credits for the purchase of natural gas vehicles
- Decrease our output of carbon into the atmosphere as natural gas contains about 30% less carbon for the same energy output.
The benefits to the economy would be tremendous:
- Substitute domestic natural gas for imported oil, thus reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
- Reduce our trade deficit.
- Increase investment and jobs in our domestic natural gas industry.
- Increase investment and jobs in our domestic auto and truck industry.
This bill could create million of American jobs. We spend about $1 billion per day to import foreign oil. This is like a huge tax on our economy.
We also spend billions of dollars per year on our military to protect our access to foreign oil. We fight wars where we are funding both sides of the war. (Money for Islamic terrorists comes from countries whose oil we purchase.)
T. Boone Pickens, who has been advocating for these bills, thinks that the votes are there in congress to pass this legislation. These are tough bills to vote against. Voting against it is a vote against American Energy and American Jobs. These bills should be a top priority in congress.
Comments
Natural gas sounds good, in theory, but that rubber-road contact point with natural gas worries me more than a bit.
Methane has eight times the effect on global warming as does CO2. All natural gas lines leak because it's under pressure and the connections are not perfect.
www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c23/page_160.shtml
Then there's the whole issue of the awful environmental impact the natural gas drilling industry leaves in the form of harmful fracking chemicals. See the documentary "Split Estate" and decide how you feel about natural gas.
www.splitestate.com
I love the way the gas industry doesn't want any state or federal regulation of what they do, but they want a federal bailout (Natural Gas Act) to build markets for them. They want a bailout to build markets because they've sunk billions in developing unconventional shale plays and the price is under $4/1000. Someone is gonna start losing a lot of money in this business soon if the demand doesn't catch up. Can you say "natural gas bubble?"
American consumers use energy, lots of energy. We somehow don't equate our wasteful ways with the impact on the environment. (we drink water from disposable plastic bottles and keep our houses comfortable heated/cooled and drive SUV's. Why are the businesses that support our glutenous ways the culprite here? BP wouldn't even be a company, and WE wouldn't have a ravaged Gulf Coast if we didn't NEED the oil they drill for. WE need to be accountable as a people for the result of our excesses.
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