Frontlines

The United States must turn overseas for natural gas supplies, in spite of worries about energy independence.

It's been an unusual summer, to say the least. In the last few weeks, an unending parade of gas executives, attorneys, consultants, academics, bankers, and most notably, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, have commented on gas reserves issues before Congress. Certainly, the steady increase in natural gas prices gives cause for concern. Ordinary consumers (voters!) face higher utility bills-not only for winter heating, but for summer cooling, too. The news is bad even for those crystal-ball-gazers who tout hydrogen as the eventual savior of the nation's energy woes, since all that hydrogen would be manufactured largely from-you guessed it-natural gas.

Of course, every problem has a solution. With natural gas, that means looking overseas for imports. But will the United States embrace such an idea, given our past experience with global oil markets, our current dependence on Middle East oil, and the political and military costs that follow, as has been shown so vividly by recent events?

Yet economists such as Greenspan advocate a global natural gas market system, in spite of the odds.