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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: blue red who wrote (8751)	3/20/2004 4:52:29 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 20773

Sorry to be so late in responding No problem - I just saw I have PM's from last week I haven't noticed till now. Gas prices seven years after passage of the NGPA don’t seem quite to the point. Are we in disagreement? I guess so, NGPA was passed in 1978. It continued price regulation of natural gas at the wellhead, setting up 26 categories of gas - some of which higher prices were allowed for. It also favored residential use over industrial. Phased out decontrol of natural gas prices was to begin in 1985. Final price controls of natural gas ended (officially) on 1/1/93 though price controls had long been rendered meaningless by low market prices. I mentioned the industry’s claims in the 1970s that natural gas was disappearing forever, and that only new exploration could stave off its imminent exhaustion – exploration that only deregulation could stimulate, the industry argued. A drastic gas shortage backed up its claims. The shortage so completely convinced Congress and the Administration that the Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act was passed in 1978, forbidding utilities to generate with gas ever again, so that precious natural gas could be reserved for residential users. That was the situation on passage on the NGPA. Two weeks later, I saw the the first report of an impending gas glut in the Washington Post. Yes, that would be because of the diversion from power plants and industrial users to residential users, I think. I recall the period and my memory is that government proponents (I'm remembering Carter's "energy czar") of price controls believed the shortage of natural gas in the '70's was a real physical shortage. And as a result, decontrol of wellhead prices wouldn't produce more supply but would just give a windfall to producers, they argued. In reality, the '70's natural gas shortage was merely one of price. If you hold prices down low enough long enough, you can produce a shortage of anything. forbidding utilities to generate with gas ever again, so that precious natural gas could be reserved for residential users. Incidentally, this isn't the case anymore and utility burning of natural gas has been increasing for some years now. “The oil business doesn't share its secrets with the public, consumers or even the US government....They are supposed to provide the government with accurate oil data but this is VOLUNTARY.” My account confirms that, but you can figure it out yourself. The federal government has no means to check the veracity of energy industry claims about fuel resources. To do that, it would have to go out and drill for itself. There used to be talk of setting up a Federal Fuels Corporation for that exact purpose. I repeat: the oil business tells us what it wants us to know. What it reports is voluntary. The passage of the NGPA, and even more startlingly, of the Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act – whose premise was a wholesale falsehood - are dramatic cases in point. I'm not sure what voluntary reporting to the government you and AS are referring to. And I don't know what secrets you think the industry might be keeping from the government.