IEA and Gas

  
The IEA was founded in response to the 1973/4 oil crisis in order to help countries co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in oil supply through the release of emergency oil stocks to the markets. It is made up of 28 member nations and funded by member nations and private donations. Since the oil crisis is over one might expect its activities to decline but the IEA budget for 2010 was EUR 26 million dollars.

The IEA Execuive Director, Maria van der Hoeven spoke recently at Rice University and  made some interesting observations as reported by Simone Sebastian in FuelFix. She stated the public concern over fracking was legitimate and companies' refusal to take these concerns seriously could result in a public movement against the technology.  However, she said, the curtailing of shale gas production would have a negative environmental impact and  hinder progress toward energy security. If natural gas were lost, coal would replace 75a% of it. "Natural gas in the power sector has caused carbon emissions to fall rapidly. And it’s the shale gas revolution that made this possible,” she said.

In addition to the environmental benefit, booming growth of unconventional natural gas production is revolutionizing the global energy market and will likely turn the United States into a net exporter of the fuel, van der Hoeven said.

Read that again: The U.S. a net exporter of energy. And the threat to that is company arrogance and public foolishness.