Natural Gas Facts

Natural Gas

Did you know that 900 of the next 1000 US power plants will use natural gas? Domestically produced and readily available to end-users through the existing utility infrastructure, natural gas has also become increasingly popular as an alternative transportation fuel.

The Office of Fossil Energy invests in research and development of technologies in the areas of natural gas supply, delivery reliability, and utilization. Through the Strategic Center for Natural Gas , DOE works with industry to develop technologies to support this fuel. In addition, the Natural Gas and Petroleum Import and Export Office is responsible for regulating natural gas imports and exports under Section 3 of the Natural Gas Act of 1938; maintaining statistics on North American natural gas trade, and overseeing the Office of Fossil Energy's international programs pertaining to natural gas and petroleum.

Serving alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs), natural gas is clean burning and produces significantly fewer harmful emissions than reformulated gasoline. Natural gas can either be stored on board a vehicle in tanks as compressed natural gas (CNG) or cryogenically cooled to a liquid state, liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Further, the Clean Cities program supports public and private partnerships that deploy alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) and build supporting infrastructure.

The Energy Information Administration maintains statistical data relating to the consumption and production of natural gas .

Demand

The nation's fastest-growing energy source. Demand forecast to increase more than 40% by 2025 1 , including an over 50% demand for electric power generation.
Americans used 22.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas in 2002 - about 20% of US energy needs.
About 60 million residential customers and 5 million commercial and industrial customers (providing almost half the energy for commercial facilities and nearly 38% for industrial operations).
Nearly 130,000 buses, taxis, delivery trucks and other natural gas-powered vehicles, according to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition.
Uses

• Meets 24% of U.S. energy requirements. • Heats 61% of U.S. households. • Generates electricity, accounting for 80% of new capacity. • Cools homes and provides fuel for cooking. • Energy source or raw material to make a wide range of products, such as plastics, steel, glass, synthetic fabrics, fertilizer, aspirin, automobiles and processed food. · Share of use by sector: 41%, industrial; 23%, residential; 15%commercial; 13%, electric power generation; 8%, other.

Supply

• U.S. produced 19 trillion cubic feet in 2002.
• About 83% of U.S. supply produced at home; 16% imported from Canada.
• Liquefied natural gas imports account for 1% of supply.
• U.S. production essentially flat for past two decades. Growing imports fill gap.

Future resources

• Potential natural gas resources (1,258 Tcf) enough to last more than 60 years at current production rates.
• Federal lands contain 59% of nation's estimated undiscovered natural gas (offshore, in Alaska and in the Mountain West), according to data from the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
• There is 284 Tcf of technically recoverable natural gas in the Mountain West alone - enough natural gas to power more than 284 million homes for 10 years.
• MMS, USGS and other government data show that government policies place 40% of the nation's estimated undiscovered natural gas on federal lands off-limits or make it accessible only under highly restrictive conditions. Lawsuits and bureaucratic delays block the development of more.