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January 28, 2010

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Plumbing

Just go with the demands of natural gas, you can blame people why they used to consume natural gas because with this they can save money. Grab the opportunity to supply natural gas. And besides you are helping others as well as helping our environment.

plumbing

Natural gas logs are very popular, but there are a number of things to consider when choosing logs. There are specific logs that are suited for many different purposes. One of the first important decisions you must make will be to consider whether you will purchase a vented, or unvented, natural gas log fireplace.

Elgen

Hi Surdas, thanks for renadig and taking the time to comment. I have to disagree with your contention that we are not going to find ways of extracting oil or gas at lower costs than conventional. Natural gas disproves that entirely. The line between conventional and unconventional is a moving target, but shale and tight gas are unconventional by almost anyone's definition. The cost of gas out of shale wells in Alberta and elsewhere is far cheaper than out of conventional wells in the same jurisdictions. In fact, you do see people shutting-in conventional production while unconventional production expands. I do agree that we are unlikely to discover giant conventional fields. Importantly, high oil prices don't drive people to seek out low GHG energy they drive people to seek out oil or a good substitute. Some of those might be low-GHG sources, but only high GHG prices will create a preference for low-GHG oil substitutes over high GHG ones.The thought process I am trying to drive here is not to think about oil prices as purely a force which acts on the demand side, and to also think of prices as a consequence of the interaction of supply and demand, not a driver for supply or demand. For example, you argue that low oil prices will drive lower investment in renewable energy this is certainly true in a vacuum, but I would push you one step further and ask you why oil prices are low? Suppose that there is a breakthrough on par with horizontal drilling and fracking that leads to massive cost reductions in next gen biofuels. The availability of a cheap substitute for oil would drive down the price of oil, and rather than that driving down investment in the renewable energy source, it would be because of the investment (and breakthrough) in the renewable energy source. I think it's tempting to think of oil sands and renewable fuels as fundamentally different because of their environmental footprint. Unfortunately, in the absence of pricing policies on those environmental attributes, the race is simply to provide energy to the market which is signaling value through the price. Whether the ramp up is slow or fast, the technology which can best do this will be the one which is adopted the fastest. thanks again for renadig.

Hamada

I think you're being a little siiitmslpc when it comes to a couple facets of your argument. One As more of these deep water wells are drilled or oil sands plants are built, the technology will improve, and the costs will go down. These are expensive, long to develop, capital intensive plays with uncertain flow through rates and a host of other uncertain variables. There are all kinds of natural limits you can butt up against (water use if the oil sands significantly scales up, black swans when it comes to deep water drilling). All the technology in the world isn't going to make bitumen anything less than 20-40% oil when it comes out of the ground. There are limits to natural capital that all of the tech in the world can't solve whether it makes sense from a price perspective or not. I'm fairly indifferent to the price of oil. I'm more of a fan of the price going up because of the limits it puts on the depletion of natural capital but there are a lot of moving parts here. The price of oil will do its thing. I'm currently more worried about food price volatility/climate change related matters and its effect on politics around the world. If what happened in Moscow this summer happened in Chicago (and it will eventually) you're going to be hearing a different tune from south of the border. TwoYou seem to have been sucked into this view that environmentalists are this homogenous block who all want electric cars and alternative fuel sources so we can continue to run this amazing and trouble free transportation system we have. I don't think electric cars are worth the rare earths that you dig out of the ground to run them. Looking at it from a systems perspective, our road system is an investment in infrastructure that is simply unsustainable (damn that word). Two cars a household, the investment in public space for private property (parking), ever widening roads and the vehicles that fill them, this is not planning, it's madness.

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