First, some background on U.S. natural gas sources and markets. Most of our country’s gas is consumed in the major population centers of the northeast, the so-called Washington-to-Boston corridor. It’s cold here in the winter and a number of homes use gas as a primary heat source. Gas is also used year-round to heat water, cook and dry clothes. Business and industry use gas to heat and cool buildings and it’s increasingly used for power generation. Starting around World War II and prior to the shale gas boom of the past eight years, most of the natural gas used in Pennsylvania came out of the ground in Oklahoma, Texas and under the Gulf of Mexico — yes, there are pipelines on the sea floor. (Fuel coming from outside Pennsylvania is referred to below as imported gas.) There is already major infrastructure in place to bring imported gas here. Large, […]