ABSTRACT
In 2011, the International Energy Agency (IEA), an organization composed of oil-importing countries, proclaimed a Golden Age of Gas IEA. In 2013, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that the United States has 84 years of natural gas reserves at current rates of consumption. Local distribution still has natural monopoly characteristics, as it would not be cost-effective to have competing distribution pipelines serving small retail customers. The natural gas transported through the transmission pipeline system and used in final product form for heating, cooking, and electricity generation, is pure methane. In US, the share of natural gas used to generate electricity has increased dramatically in recent years, mostly at the expense of coal. Levelized cost provides a simple technique for comparing the average cost of generating electricity using different fuels over the plant's lifetime. Modern-day hydraulic fracturing, which combines vertical and horizontal drilling into tight rock formations, has dramatically increased US natural gas production and reserves and decreased price.
