Word: coal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...covers the cost of piping it to customers. Utilities and other major users buy gas under long-term contracts, so the full weight of any price increase may not be felt for years.If the price of natural gas rises sharply enough, it may become cheaper to use oil, coal and other fuels. At $2.48, for instance, gas becomes as expensive as home heating oil. In that case, demand for gas may lessen, forcing prices to drop...
More precisely, since no one contends that coal and uranium supplies are running out, is there a shortage...
Also, the Administration and Congress need to rethink what must be done to increase the use of coal. Carter and Energy Secretary Schlesinger plan on a 65% increase in coal use by 1985, but they assume that this will happen as an automatic consequence of forcing power plants and factories to switch from oil and gas to coal as boiler fuel. This may be too ambitious a target, since it could be achieved only if that segment of U.S. industry that is capable of using coal as fuel multiplies its consumption four or five times above present levels in less...
...instance, early this year Mobil ran an ad entitled "Infamous Energy Mysteries: Case No. 3." The ad decried the situation in Gilette, Wyo., where Mobil owned a coal field but was at that time unable to mine it because of delays caused by environmental "over-regulation" and "red tape." The extent of these bothersome requirements became clear only later in the ad: the government required Mobil to assess the environmental impact of the proposed surface mining and required it to devise a plan to reclaim any areas that suffered adversely. The ad demurred, "We want to protect the environment...
When Carter's energy plan was announced last spring, though, Mobil's arguments took a curious turn. It seemed that Carter wanted to expand the use of coal in industries that had previously used oil, and Mobil got a little bit frightened. While coal was a pleasant sideline for the energy conglomerate, oil was its mainstay; so suddenly and mysteriously Mobil acquired an environmental conscience. In an ad entitled "Musings of an oil person," Mobil questioned the desirability of a switch to coal on the grounds that it raised serious environmental questions, including the problems of strip mining...