PELIGRO CON LA INSTALACION DE PLANTAS DE GAS NATURAL

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: June 15, 2005 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Just as the 19th century was shaped by coal and the 20th century by oil, people in the energy industry say, this century will belong to natural gas. But to judge by the battle over energy legislation that began yesterday in Congress, it will not happen easily.


International energy companies, the Bush administration and governments in gas-rich countries are aggressively championing the creation of a global market for natural gas, with the United States at its center as the largest importer. They are promoting the fuel as more plentiful and less polluting than oil and needed to sustain economic growth.

But in the same way that American oil output began to fall short in the 1960's and has steadily diminished as a source of energy, the United States is already running low on its own production of natural gas. To fill the gap, vast amounts of gas will have to be imported - in liquefied form, arriving by tanker on the coasts of the United States or elsewhere in North America.

Like oil, large reserves of natural gas are found far from the big markets for the fuel, in countries like Qatar, Iran, Russia, Angola, Yemen and Algeria. Competition for gas projects in these places has prompted a frenetic race among international oil companies to meet demand for the fuel in rich industrialized countries.

These ambitions in the United States face strong resistance. Officials in some states where energy companies plan to build terminals that would receive the gas tankers - including Alabama, California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island - say they could fall victim to a catastrophic explosion, either accidental or set by terrorists.

President Bush, trying to maneuver past the objectors, has endorsed legislation, which is currently being debated in the Senate, that would allow the federal government to overrule the states.

"Congress should make it clear to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission its authority to choose sites for new terminals, so we can expand our use of liquefied natural gas," Mr. Bush said in April.

But he faces a fight in Congress too. Several senators, including Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, are sponsoring an amendment to oppose greater federal authority.

The federal commission's chairman, Patrick Wood III, told energy industry officials in Houston in February that he expected at least eight new terminals for liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., to be built in the United States by 2010. There are now four terminals - in Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and Massachusetts - built during an earlier foray into L.N.G. in the 1960's and 1970's.

Some Object to Terminals

Energy companies want to construct more than 40 such terminals at a cost of $500 million to $1 billion each. The emerging conflict is taking place as some scientists and environmentalists say that the nation is once again placing too little emphasis on improving energy efficiency and making investments in other methods for producing power and heat, including wind, biomass and nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, utilities that buy gas warn that in becoming ever more reliant on natural gas from abroad, the United States would be running the same risk it made when it came to depend on oil from unstable sources in the Middle East.

Natural gas is expected to overtake coal and rival oil as the leading fossil fuel in the world by 2025 - sooner if the largest energy concerns get their way. They are pursuing more than $100 billion in projects to create a global market for gas that will be increasingly vital to generate electricity, heat and cool buildings, manufacture the fertilizers that help feed the world and even run some vehicles.

Natural gas accounts for 24 percent of the nation's energy consumption. Plentiful and less polluting than oil, natural gas, whose consumption still emits greenhouse gases, has become much more popular over the last decade after it was prized as a fuel for new power plants.

The rising consumption of natural gas comes with a significant cost, however. "We're at a similar stage with natural gas as we once were with oil," said Donald E. Felsinger, president of Sempra Energy of San Diego, which plans to import natural gas from Russia to Texas, Louisiana and northern Mexico. "We're not self-sufficient anymore, and we're going to depend on imports to allow people to keep consuming it."