2004 - The article excerpts that were in the NEWS INDEX on the Empower Energy Site provided the average natural gas residential, commercial and industrial consumer with industry realities. The ones included in the resurrected articles in this sub-index are now sufficient given political events since 2000.

That selection of articles outlines many of the major production, distribution, pricing, health, market, and reliability factors which will continue not only to influence but to impact the industry over the decade 2000-2010.

AWARENESS.

As the Project Earth Report shows, history provides repeated examples of how human civilizations rise on the discovery of some form of technology which affords greatly advanced levels of production, accumulation of surplus, and the development of population multiplication and concentration. The latter inevitably lead to demands for orderliness and political stability which have typically been answered with human-centred authority structures, social and religious intolerance and privelege, administrative control and power, external envy, and military reliance.

Ever intensifying interrelationships of co-dependency, and a surrendering of self-sufficiency, within a now powerful society always and eventually become the weakness which leads to the often rapid disappearance of the culture and a large percentage of the interconnected human population. There has always been a potential for avoidance of the final crash, but such re-orientations have never been taken in recorded human history. Here are a few potential developments for the near future.

AVAILABILITY.

Gas supplies may become tight for periods of 2 to 10 months as many as 6 times over the next 12 years. This would result in supplies to some industries being curtailed and could result in workers from those industries being laid off, companies going bankrupt, fuel being rationed to consumers, supplies being temporarily terminated. Consider that most of current natural gas use occurs in temporate countries in which normal climatic variations during 1996 - 2000 have resulted in major snow storms, droughts, and floods. In late 1999, 60% of USA electrical generation is dependent upon natural gas supply. More than 50% of Canadian residential heating depends upon natural gas supply.

• Accelerated depletion;
• Exploration failures;
• Globalization;
• Over-demand;
• Terrorism;
• Geological restrictions;
• Resource instability;
• Environmental disaster.

GLOBALIZATION.

1. Economic equalization:
   Every economic empire has succeeded by leveraging the cheaper labor and resources of less materially sophisticated human groups and less developed and consumed sources of supply. Globalization makes access to international markets available beyond that of the economic elite and participants in high demand economies with high standards of living.

   Already evident to most Canadians through the 1990s, this dynamic equalizes material deprivation across the masses and intensifies control of wealth within a shrinking minority. Whenever basic resources (food, shelter, energy ... natural gas/gasoline/electricity) to high standard-of-living cultural participants rise markedly faster than income, financial restriction and deprivation result in loss. Try to stabilize both income and expenses. By North American standards, most North Americans will be economically poor by 2004.
   
   
   

2. Chronic under-employment:
   Since 1980, a shift from hourly paid to commission payment and from full-time permanent work to contract work has continually expanded in the job market. The conditions of the majority of Canadians are held in denial by the media, politicians, educators, and the financially priveleged. The reality, according to government statistics, is that more and more people are working two or three part-time jobs to cover basic expenses.

   Part-time workers seldom receive any employment or social benefits ... which can equal 20% of the income of a permanent worker. Under-employed workers frequently fall into economic denial and overuse their credit in the hope that permanent full-time positions will return for them. That is seldom the reality. Fluctuating basic expenses greatly impact those with low incomes and unstable working hours.
   
   
   

3. Bio-hazard economic disruption:
   Chronic illness prevalence in North America has been notably increasing throughout the 1900s. It has been exponentially increasing during the past decade. It affects all age groups, genders, races, levels of income, and levels of education. Conventional medical research and approaches have gained little knowledge and provided little benefit in these areas following huge expenditures of financial resources.

   Chronic illnesses often endanger income and employability, usually promote increased co-dependency, can increase basic expense demands, and make increasing basic costs associated with energy supplies ... devastating. An allergy can reduce a person's productivity by 25% for the duration of its influence (seasonal, intermittent, full-time). A flu can remove an employee from their work, and their income, for 3 weeks (1998 example). Dental amalgam toxicities can destroy employability, promote severe illness formation and treatment expense, and lead to death. Environmental hypersensitivities can do all of the foregoing.
   
   

   Globalization of food supply has been growing in North America since external plantation economies were set up in Central America in the 1930s. The transference of North American agri-industry practices to Brazil, Mexico, and other supply nations has often been applied with extreme and irrelevant to local soils, plants and pests. North American restrictions on the use of pesticides (heavy metal toxins) do not apply and are not enforced in other countries whose produce we import.

   Political and public health resources in Canada, and probably the USA, are totally unprepared to cope with the potential for outbreaks of illness (pesticide toxicity) arising from imported produce. As the symptoms are radically different from bacterially-based food poisoning, few ill persons are likely to seek medical help, and, almost no doctors are knowledgeable of or able to test and treat same. The result can be severely decreased job productivity, increased relationship stress, and economic undependability for both employer and employee. These outcomes further strain an economic environment which is focused on micro-efficiency.

TERRORISM.

1. Iraq:
   Any military dictatorship which has been attacked and has not been defeated is motivated to revenge. Defeat is equal to a change of leadership and government structure. Revenge is aggression. A less powerful opponent targets the weaknesses of an adversary. An economic weakness is any factor which acts as a foundation to the power of the opponent. Iraq proved that it could be a crucial link in oil supply to North America in late November, 1999. Pipelines are an easy unprotected target for terrorists. Most natural gas supply is delivered by pipeline from source fields to delivery regions.
   
   

2. Mexico:
   One of the top four oil suppliers for North America.
   Mexico is increasingly becoming more self-sufficient economically by developing industrial and commercial uses for its own oil and gas production. This allows it to continue stable production during periods of weak external demand to build internal inventories for internal use. It can afford to participate in OPEC production restrictions and benefit from higher pricing to pay for more government services for its citizens.
   
   

3. Saudi Arabia:
   One of the top four oil suppliers for North America.
   Following the 1990 Gulf War, Saudi Arabia was persuaded to become the largest military armaments and telecommunications national customer of the United States. It cannot pay its American expenses with low oil pricing. Its leaders also try to provide a good standard of living for its population which is totally dependent on government financial support. All these expenses must be paid for with oil production income. The Saudis are aware that their supplies will begin to diminish in availability by as early as 2012. They are highly motivated to keep crude oil prices high.
   
   

4. Venezuela:
   One of the top four oil suppliers for North America.
   An expanding impoverished population with a dependency on oil production income, it has every motivation to support high crude oil prices.
   
   

5. North America:
   One of the top four oil suppliers for North America.
   Inadequate land-based well-drilling successes have turned resource exploration to more expensive off-coast ocean shelf developments for the past 6 years. To date, these developments are billions of dollars in cost, high on hope and expectation, theoretically plentiful, ... and still to deliver.

The higher crude oil pricing goes, and stays, the greater the motivation of North American industry, commerce, and residential energy users to switch energy sources to natural gas ... which is currently plentiful and controllable from within North America.

RESOURCE INSTABILITY.

1. Computer control accidents are highly possible from Y2K errors, overautomated decision dependency, cosmic ray electronic device and satellite disruption, and, human error.
   
   

2. Pipeline age and stress fractures are known to develop and have resulted in at least one huge fire and natural gas disruption. These are difficult to find and repair and the potential for them to become a reality will enlarge with time.
   
   

3. Climactic demands have produced great market value, storage capacity, and availability of natural gas supplies during 1998-1999. As economic micro-efficiencies are adopted, supply providers have diminished inventories relative to demand and sought supply contracts on a short-term demand basis. The supply network is fragile when the weekly weather forecast for a region of the USA or Canada can spike or drop resource prices and produce concerns about adequate supply.
   
   

4. Political reduction of supply happens when provincial or state governments levy high taxes on the sale of natural gas or oil. Without allowances to support private sector investment in exploration, refining, environmental protection, and distribution ... investors are left to take high risks for low to moderate profits. Providing developmental support without mandating environmental standards can result in economic and health losses to citizens who then become adversaries to the industry. Low profits and political adversity can persuade exploration companies to look elsewhere.
   
   

5. Satellite communication disruption caused by cosmic ray bursts, usually sourced from the Sun, is possible and does happen. These bursts are part of a Solar cycle as yet not understood. They may occur years or decades apart and their intensity may be short-lived ... just long enough to knock a satellite out of orbit (telephone-radio-TV-military-Internet-Extranet), cause malfunctioning of electrical generating stations, disrupt military and missile controls, and destroy electronic components in any exposed computerized device. At least one such incident is (was) expected before 2004. It could result in brownouts, pipeline control malfunctions, explosions, and disruptions of supply.

ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER.

1. Storms have the capacity to shut down ocean oil/gas well drilling platforms, close refineries, strand tankers, and disrupt electrical supplies. In mid-November, 1999, a hurricane in the Caribbean forced Amerada Hess Corp. to shut the second-biggest refinery in the Western Hemisphere, which gave gas prices a boost.

2. Earthquakes have been occurring with more frequency through the late 1990s and pose potential threats to pipelines. Most North American pipelines do not go through regions of frequent or dramatic earthquake activity. Still, a pipeline only needs one break or crack.

3. Cosmic radiation bursts from the Sun or other sources in the universe as well as from the atmospheric explosion of nuclear devices can result in the destruction, disabling, or malfunctioning of electronic devices. Most natural gas is delivered through systems monitored and controlled by electronics. Y2K readiness is meaningless to this problem.

PREPARATIONS.

The person and family who is not prepared for highly possible changes risks the traumatic experiences of loss, intense challenge, disorientation. An aware person, by their attentiveness, is more capable of understanding, adapting and responding to sudden or dramatic changes. A prepared person has become aware and has proactively prepared, according to their resources, basic procedures and responses to basic challenges.

By the year 2004, 90% of North Americans will be dependent upon natural gas supplies for one or more of these: residential heating and cooling, commercially generated electrical supply, support of working environment. Economic challenge through unstable and fluctuating supply rates for natural gas and electrical power will, eventually, contribute to the failure of companies and the destitution of individuals. History has many examples of this pattern in other eras.
Ignorance and denial may be a comfort; they are no protection.