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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (112589)	4/17/2012 6:44:41 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 149317

" Our worst nightmare is these RW nuts stoned." I've had this fantasy for years of going around at the (R) convention dressed like an (R) and squirting some liquid LSD into all the water pitchers. Now, THAT would be an (R) convention worth watching! Can't you just picture Mitt at the podium, raptly staring at his hands? But, they'd probably turn into a hall full of Charly Mansons.

To: Road Walker who wrote (112589)	4/18/2012 12:29:39 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Natural Gas Signals a ‘Manufacturing Renaissance’ By JIM MOTAVALLI Published: April 10, 2012 AS horizontal drilling and the controversial extraction technique known as fracking have made domestically produced natural gas more available and sharply cheaper, that gas has been widely embraced by industry, electric utilities and trucking fleets. There are about 1,000 natural gas stations in the United States (compared with nearly 160,000 gasoline stations) and only half of those are open to the public. The rapid development of shale gas technology has helped reduce energy imports and, in some cases, encouraged companies producing petrochemicals, steel, fertilizers and other products to return to the United States after relocating overseas. Natural gas exports are growing and terminals built to hold imported supplies are being repurposed for international sales. The American petrochemical industry, for example, uses natural gas as both its primary raw material, in the form of liquid ethane, and as an energy fuel. And cheaper prices have led to a major expansion of capacity in the United States. The hydrocarbon molecules in natural gas are split apart and then recombined as building blocks for many products, including bulk chemicals and fertilizers. The chemical ethylene, which is largely derived from natural gas, is used to make things like pool liners, building insulation and food packaging. According to Kevin Swift, chief economist at the American Chemistry Council, European producers mostly use oil-derived raw materials for making these same products. “The U.S. has a competitive advantage when oil is seven times as expensive as natural gas, but now we have more like a 50-to-1 advantage,” he said. “The ‘shale gale’ is really driving this. A million B.T.U.’s of natural gas that might cost $11 in Europe and $14 in South Korea is $2.25 in the U.S. Partly because of that, chemical producers have plans to expand ethylene capacity in the U.S. by more than 25 percent between now and 2017.” A 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimates that high rates of shale gas recovery could result in a million new manufacturing jobs by 2025. Robert McCutcheon, United States industrial products leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in a statement that the revived natural gas industry “has the potential to spark a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S., including billions in cost savings, a significant number of new jobs and a greater investment in U.S. plants.” The growing commitment to natural gas faces some headwinds because of continuing concern over the safety of fracking, which involves forcing pressurized fluids into shale formations to fracture the rock and release the gas deposits. Some environmentalists say that fracking can cause drinking water to become contaminated with chemicals and released methane, which is a powerful naturally occurring greenhouse gas and the primary ingredient in natural gas. Other complaints tie the disposal of fracking wastewater to a series of small earthquakes. Some states and municipalities with questions about fracking have imposed temporary moratoriums on the extraction technique. Despite these issues, natural gas is expanding its reach in manufacturing. The Nucor Corporation, which makes direct-reduced iron in a process heavily reliant on natural gas, said in 2010 that it would build a $750 million facility in Louisiana. In 2004, the company dismantled a similar Louisiana plant and shipped it to Trinidad. According to Nucor, affordable domestic natural gas means its made-in-Louisiana direct-reduced iron, which is sold in pellet or briquette form as a raw material for steel mills, can be delivered at the same price as the product shipped from Trinidad. “Affordable American shale gas has completely changed the economics for us,” said Katherine Miller, a Nucor spokeswoman. Methanex, a Canadian company that makes methanol from natural gas is planning to move a plant from Chile to Louisiana, with production to begin in 2014. Gary Rowan, a Methanex vice president, said that his company had also shut down a Louisiana plant in the early 2000s. “Certainly, the outlook for low North American natural gas prices is one of the reasons we selected Louisiana as a new location for our methanol plant,” he said. Electric utilities see a significant natural gas price advantage over other fuels, but because of pending and potential environmental regulations they are also motivated by its status as the fossil fuel with the lowest carbon emissions. On March 27, the Obama administration proposed the first-ever rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. Natural gas plants are expected to meet the standard, but coal burners will have a much harder time. “The electricity sector is the principal growth area for natural gas under carbon dioxide emission constraints,” said an M.I.T. study titled “The Future of Natural Gas.” read more.............. nytimes.com