Vaclav Smil - Natural Gas: Fuel for the 21st Century

1. Chapter 01
2. Chapter 02
3. Chapter 03
4. Chapter 04
5. Chapter 05
6. Chapter 06
7. Chapter 07
8. Chapter 08

Vaclav Smil

This edition first published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smil, Vaclav.
Natural gas : fuel for the 21st century / Vaclav Smil.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-119-01286-3 (pbk.)
1. Natural gas. 2. Gas as fuel. I. Title.
TP350.S476 2015
665.7dc23

2015017048

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781119012863

Cover image: sbayram/iStockphoto

Vaclav Smil conducts interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. He has published 35 books and close to 500 papers on these topics. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the Member of the Order of Canada, and in 2010 he was listed by Foreign Policy among the top 50 global thinkers.

Previous works by author

• Chinas Energy
  Energy in the Developing World (edited with W. Knowland)
  Energy Analysis in Agriculture (with P. Nachman and T. V. Long II)
  Biomass Energies
  The Bad Earth
  Carbon Nitrogen Sulfur
  Energy Food Environment
  Energy in Chinas Modernization
  General Energetics
  Chinas Environmental Crisis
  Global Ecology
  Energy in World History
  Cycles of Life
  Energies
  Feeding the World
  Enriching the Earth
  The Earths Biosphere
  Energy at the Crossroads
  Chinas Past, Chinas Future
  Creating the 20th Century
  Transforming the 20th Century
  Energy: A Beginners Guide
  Oil: A Beginners Guide
  Energy in Nature and Society
  Global Catastrophes and Trends
  Why America Is Not a New Rome
  Energy Transitions
  Energy Myths and Realities
  Prime Movers of Globalization
  Japans Dietary Transition and Its Impacts (with K. Kobayashi)
  Harvesting the Biosphere
  Should We Eat Meat?
  Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing
  Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization
  Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses

This book, my 36th, has an unusual origin. For decades, I have followed an unvarying pattern: as I am finishing a book, I had already chosen a new project from a few ideas that had been queuing in my mind, sometimes coming to the fore just in a matter of months and in two exceptional cases (books on creating and transforming the twentieth century) after a wait of nearly two decades. But in January 2014, as I was about to complete the first draft of my latest book (Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses), I was still undecided what to do next. Then I got an e-mail from Nick Schulz at ExxonMobil who is also a reader (and a reviewer) of my books, asking me if I had considered writing a book about natural gas akin to my two beginners guides (to energy and to oil) published by Oneworld in Oxford in, respectively, 2006 and 2008.

I had written about natural gas in most of my energy books, but in January 2014, the idea of a book solely devoted to it was not even at the end of my mental book queue. But considering all the attention natural gas has been getting, it immediately seemed an obvious thing to do. And because there are so many components and perspectives to the natural gas storyranging from the fuel as a key part of the United States much publicized energy revolution to its strategic value in Russias in its dealings with Europe and to its role in replacing coal in the quest for reduced greenhouse gas emissionsit was no less obvious that I will have to approach the task in my usual interdisciplinary fashion and that I will dwell not only with what we know but also describe and appraise many unknowns and uncertainties that will affect the fuels importance in the twenty-first century.