I'm not sure that was connected to what I'm about to share with you but it's definitely something I'm keeping in mind.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is out with a study that tells us natural gas usage will really start coming into its own based on several factors.  As you guys know, nat gas trucking is one of my pet causes so this was pretty encouraging to see.

The New York Times has the story:

Are we entering a golden age of gas?

The answer is yes, according to a report with just that title released on Monday by the International Energy Agency — as long as the price for natural gas remains low and governments adopt strong regulations to overcome environmental concerns about hydraulic fracturing.

The report projects that natural gas could make up 25 percent of the global energy mix in 2035, up from 21 percent now, replacing coal, nuclear and some power from renewable sources like wind and solar. The drivers of the fuel’s growing popularity are uncertainty about nuclear power after the recent Japanese disaster, an anticipated boom in demand from China and, most important, the widespread development of gas fields from unconventional sources like shale rock.

Critics of our new methods of drilling for gas will point to the ecological cost of having such an abundance of it.  I will then point to the fact that we will be using something, and gas is less dirty than both coal and oil and less frightening than nuclear.  And we're certainly not going to be driving cars with windsails on the roof, so let's be pragmatic about it.

Source:

A 'Golden Age' for Gas?  Two Caveats (NYT)

As you guys know by now, I am a huge proponent of natural gas vehicles in the United States and one of the key points I make is that we have a 200-year domestic supply domestically.  If we could switch more trucking, as a start, the immediate impact on jobs and geopolitical relationships would be incredibly beneficial.  But (and there's always a but), one of the problems with this huge supply is that much of it depends on the further proliferation of a technique called Fracking.  If done incorrectly (or carelessly), fracking could present its own serious environmental threat.

The below video, called My Water's On Fire, offers an important (and groovy) explanation of the issues.  Enjoy!

hat tip DigDugTrader

Last May I came up with three new blogs to watch and then last August I did a post called Leaders of the New School to highlight a few others.  I'm proud to say that I've picked some serious breakout sites in retrospect.

Let's do a Where Are They Now to catch up with the bloggers I told you would be big last year...

i heart Wall Street - This is my pal Scott's website, really it's his baby.  He's been dying to get this blog going and when I mentioned it last summer, it was really just one of several side projects of his.  And then it's like a switch was flicked on and I heart Wall Street just came alive.  Post after post - triples and home runs.  Scott knows the ins and outs of the wealth management game and he sees three steps ahead in terms of how technology and finance are converging.  And he's funny as hell, check this piece out on Branch Managers.

ChessNWine - I picked ChessNWine of iBankCoin as THE breakout star for 2010 and man did I nail it.  His combination of daily actionable stock setups and aggressive humor have made him a daily read for me and for plenty of others.  Here's Chess taking my nat gas trucking thesis and breaking down each stock involved in the play.

Stone Street Advisors - I'm starting to see a lot more Stone Street on the Abnormal Returns daily linkfest.  As I predicted, The Analyst's site has really begun gaining traction lately, solid rants like this one on f***ed up Chinese reverse mergers have taken SSA to the next level.

Dynamic Hedge - As you guys know, not a day goes by where I don't have something to say, not all of it terribly brilliant or insightful but I certainly try.  So what do we think about a guy who has something genius to say 5 days a week, someone who consistently cuts to the chase and singles out some of the most elemental factors driving the market at every turn?  Dynamic Hedge is like some kind of freak in that regard, so important as a blogger that I made him one of only three contributors to the Mixtape section of TRB.

Chicago Sean - Sean has come a long way from that Fisher Price My First Trading Blog he had going on last summer.  He is now not only blogging on the StockTwits network but he has also become the full time community manager.  Sean works his ass off keeping our stream free of spaminess, trolling, nasty comments and negative energy.  Without his efforts we'd be back on the Raging Bull message boards fighting over race, religion and 9/11 conspiracy theories.  Bravo Sean, stay Minimalist.

Leigh Drogen - Leigh's become a friend of mine over the past year and his blogging has gotten a lot broader and more worldly.  He is currently working on a very cool, potentially disruptive social media project that will let regular people come up with their own estimates versus just the same old professionals who seem to miss everything these days (Wall Street's sell-side missed Intel's last quarterly sales number by $1 billion dollars!).  Check out Leigh's startup here:  Estimize

Weakonomics - The Weakonomist is doing his thing, and his thing is very often the hilarious debunking of ridiculous, non-factual musings of others in matters economic.  He's also very good at explaining complex topics in an easily digestible format, see 10 Things You Need to Know About the Debt Ceiling for an example.

Hedgeye Blog - If you didn't know who Keith McCullough was last summer when I first highlighted the Hedgeye Blog, you certainly do now.  You can find McCullough most days on CNBC where he is a regular contributor or on the stream tweeting apoplectically about the latest Treasury and Fed shenanigans.  Keith's morning missives at the Hedgeye Blog are always well-written and never wishy-washy, witness this piece about there being too many hedge funds and too much currency.

Next week I'm doing my 2011 Leaders of the New School.  Tune in and let's see if I can predict the next round of big finance bloggers.

Full Disclosure: I'm long CLNE for client accounts.

Enjoy!

Source:

Profit from the Nat Gas Revolution (Yahoo Finance)

Can't something be good for the country and good for the man behind an $80 million lobbying effort at the same time?

Here's Joe on why the Nat Gas Act is obviously good policy:

The Pickens bill creates tax incentives — $1 billion a year for five years — to encourage manufacturers to begin building heavy-duty trucks that will be powered by natural gas instead of diesel. It also gives some tax incentives to truck-stop owners who install natural gas filling stations to help create the infrastructure.

On the face of it, this seems like a pretty small goal for a guy who’s got such big ideas about energy independence. Partly, Boone is being realistic. It would be politically impossible to convert cars to natural gas or to ask for gigantic tax breaks in this time of austerity.

Even so, this one small step could make a big difference. Of the 20 million barrels of oil we use each day, 70 percent goes for transportation fuel. The 8 million heavy-duty trucks on the road today account for 23 percent of that fuel. Although the tax incentives in the Pickens bill would be enough to cover only about 140,000 new trucks, he hopes that it will catapult the industry toward natural gas even without the subsidies. Just moving the country’s big trucks to natural gas, he says, could cut our OPEC imports in half.

More voices of reason in support of nat gas-powered vehicles.  Good.  Read the rest of Nocera's column below.

Source:

Pass The Boone Pickens Bill (NYT)

Read Also:

My Natural Gas Trucking Archives (TRB)

The very best scene in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy happens when the Fellowship is somewhere down in the heart of the abandoned mines of Moria.  As Gandalf reads the last entry in a logbook detailing the decimation of its former inhabitants, the silence is suddenly broken by a single drum beat - from somewhere deep and distant.  This percussive warning is followed by another and another until it becomes apparent that a full-scale army is massing for an onslaught.

Well, let me tell you something.  It's time to listen for those drums in the Natural Gas Vehicle industry.

Oil at $108 a barrel has gotten them pounding again, one beat, now two, now five.  It could really happen this time.  A new bill was introduced by congressmen from Oklahoma (obviously) and Connecticut (not so obviously) to restart the Natural Gas Act and finally bring some government support to marshal our cheapest, most abundant domestic resource.

From NewsOK:

Oklahoma Reps. John Sullivan and Dan Boren introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday aimed at increasing the nation's supply of natural gas vehicles, with hopes that President Barack Obama's embrace of the legislation will ensure its passage this year.

...the bill would offer credits for purchasing all new natural gas vehicles — and certain dual-fuel and bi-fuel natural gas vehicles — on a sliding scale based on weight; the credits would range from $7,500 to $64,000.

T. Boone Pickens has said he will get this done or die trying.  He is closer than ever.  The hundreds of thousands of American jobs that would be created building out this infrastructure would be a godsend.  The drop in air pollution and dollars sent to terrorist-sponsoring regimes are just the cherry on top.

You guys know the names involved should this come to pass - Fuel Systems ($FSYS), Westport Innovations ($WPRT), Cummins Engine ($CMI) and of course Pickens' own Clean Energy Fuels Corp ($CLNE) - full disclosure, I am long.  You can make your own decision whether or not the stocks make sense for you, but there is plenty of info out there on them.

I was a year early on this and had given up on it.  You can read my numerous advocacy screeds here.  But now things have changed.  Oil, and by extension, gasoline prices are demanding we do this.  Now.  Necessity is the mother of all invention they say.  Let's invent a smarter energy gameplan and get the truckers burning our 200-year domestic supply of natural gas.

Can you hear the drums?  They are getting closer, something is awakening.

Source:

Natural gas vehicle bill reintroduced in House with changes (NewsOK)

Bespoke nails the zeitgeist with their post this morning on how incredibly stretched the Oil-to-Nat Gas ratio is right now:

They ask why we haven't done anything as a country to take advantage of this disparity.  We have a 200-year supply of natural gas on our own soil, we could put millions to work building out the infrastructure for the clean-burning fuel.  This while helping the environment and starving the OPEC terror supporters.

As someone who pounded the table for action throughout 2010, I'll give you the laundry list of why we're still sitting around like idiots:

1.  While Westport Innovations ($WPRT) has CNG (compressed nat gas) engine deals with manufacturers like Cummins ($CMI), there simply won't be a big switch in trucking until there is a tax credit for the truck owners to buy new rigs.  Right now, the buses and garbage trucks are switching because they can all be refueled with CNG at a centralized depot each night.  Long-haul vehicles can't really run on CNG because they require fueling infrastructure along the highways that won't exist without incentives.

2.  Harry Reid was the single filthiest player in the Senate last year in terms of using the nat gas trucking initiative as a political gambit instead of seriously getting the Act passed.  He was for nat gas trucking credits only until he needed something to give away to keep the balls in the air.  When you're paying $5 a gallon at the pump, you can call Reid a traitor under your breath as I will.

3.  T. Boone Pickens has lobbied his ass off in DC but because of his Chairmanship and status as largest shareholder of Clean Energy Fuels Corp ($CLNE), he never seemed to be able to shake off the "talking his book" taint.  The guy is like 105 years old, I only hope he lives to see these imbeciles in Washington wake up and get this done.

4.  We are Americans and only get outraged enough to take action right before we are past the point of no return.  Winston Churchill said "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."  Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to be playing the victim a while longer.

Source:

Price of Oil to Natural Gas Expands to Record Levels (Bespoke)

Read Also:

My natural gas trucking archives (TRB)

If you ever find yourselves wondering why we're still sending $700 billion a year to hostile countries for oil, look no further than your elected officials - they will not get serious about domestic alternative fuel.

TheStreet.com's Eric Rosenbaum just posted an outright evisceration of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  Reid has just pushed the Senate Energy Bill back.  Again.  This time because the points he had hoped to score against the Republicans by painting them as obstructionists looked less likely than he had planned.

The gist of the article is that Reid never really had any intention of passing an energy bill, the whole things was and is just another political ploy.  This is particularly distressing to those of us who are not braindead and would like to see a serious alternative energy plan sometime before we die.

They all suck.  Here's Rosenbaum:

Energy reform as political pawn is bad enough, but even worse, it can be argued that Reid failed to score the minor political points he had hoped to gain when he set up the alternative energy industry for the cheap kick to the head. In announcing that the Senate would pass on energy reform until at least September, Reid spun his words about obstructionist Republicans -- but political analysts saw through the rhetoric to the divisions within Reid's own party. The rhetorical flourishes obscured the fact that the Senate punt showed the strength of the pro-oil, pro-drilling bloc.

One political analyst for the energy sector who has been on the Hill for the past several weeks as the events unfolded, said after the Senate punt that all along his understanding was that the bill introduced would never pass, and Reid thought he would be able to paint the Republicans as standing in the way of that effort.

I'll break it down for you:

The BP Gulf spill lit a fire under the Dems to get the energy bill introduced.  The plan was to include unlimited liability caps for drillers.  The pro-driller GOP was expected to fuss over it and the Dems were gonna be all like "There go the 'publicans, sticking up for Big Oil again!"  Then he lost some votes within his own party so he pulled the plug on the whole thing.

Reid's gambit was timed perfectly for the Dems to score some points against the other guys before the mid-terms but everyone saw through it.

This is all fine and dandy, that's politics.  The problem is, lost in all the BS one upmanship is the fact that several great alternative energy initiatives that could put people to work in this country and keep energy dollars away from the mideast will now have to wait.  And wait.

I'm grossed out.

Source:

Today's Outrage: Senate Punts (TSC)

I don't just bitch and moan here, I do talk about solutions now and then.  Here's one:

Nat Gas Trucking Links (TRB)

A story on the Dow Jones Newswires tells us that the $64,000 tax credit for natural gas truck purchases is going to get its shot in Congress, possibly next week...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--A plan promoted by investor T. Boone Pickens to
encourage more natural-gas vehicles will likely hitch a ride on a Senate
energy bill that is to come up for a vote at the end of July.
"We plan to do something with natural gas," Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid (D, Nev.) told reporters on Wednesday. He referred to the "Pickens
Plan" and a measure written by Sen. Bob Menendez (D, N.J.) and said "almost
certainly I'm going to put that provision in the bill."
If the measure becomes law, Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) could be a
beneficiary. Pickens owns a stake of almost 46% in the company, according to
regulatory filings. Clean Energy Fuels describes itself as the leading
provider of natural gas as a fuel for alternative-vehicle fleets in the U.S.

Senate Democrats plan to unveil the energy bill next week, according to a
Democratic aide. Reid will attempt to begin debate on the bill the week of
July 26.

I've written quite a bit about the tremendous potential for natural gas trucking, to get up to speed, follow the below link:

Natural Gas Trucking Revolution (TRB)

Full Disclosure: I currently own shares of CLNE for customer accounts.  Nothing on this site should ever be considered to be investment advice as I am unaware of the specific objectives and risk tolerances of those who may be reading.  Please do not act on anything you read here.

Anyway, China is now seeing the light on natural gas according to reports this morning.  They plan to double their usage of it - at the expense of their coal use - by 2015.

From Platts:

China plans to double the natural gas share of its total energy
consumption basket from the current 4% to 8% by 2015, a source close to the
country's National Energy Administration said Monday.

The shift would come at the expense of the share of coal in the mix in
order to increase its use of cleaner energy, the source added.

On Saturday, China's administrator of the national energy administration
Zhang Guobao told a closed-door session at the APEC meeting in Fukui, Japan,
that the country was working on raising its natural gas share in the primary
energy mix to boost energy efficiency.

China currently uses coal to meet 70% of its energy needs. Renewables,
including hydro, oil and nuclear power account for the remainder. The source
said that oil usage would remain unchanged at 26% from 2011 through 2015.

Why is the transition to natural gas so obviously advantageous to seemingly everyone except the denizens of our nation's capital?  What is it about a safer, cleaner, more domestic fuel source that they don't understand?

We've talked about the pending American Power Act that congress is expected to vote on over the next few weeks.

In that bill is a $64,000 tax credit per truck for each heavy vehicle switched over from diesel to compressed natural gas.  Hopefully, China's move this morning adds some urgency and confidence into the process so that congress realizes that this is a "do".

I'm hoping for a job-creating revolution should the Act pass, as infrastructure, exploration, storage and transmission capabilities across the country are upgraded.  There are estimates that say over a half million jobs could be created.

More employment, less money sent over to our enemies in the War on Terror, cleaner burning fuel.  Win, win, win.

Source:

China To Double Natural Gas Share Of Energy Basket (Platts)

Read Also:

The Natural Gas Trucking Revolution is Coming (TRB)