US gas squeeze hits power

Natural Gas

As the US addresses power reliability concerns raised by the biggest blackoutin its history, the country’s increasingly tight natural gas supply-demandsituation could compound the problem. The main issue is that 90% of US powerplants built since the early 1990s are natural gas-fired plants.

Several factors have fuelled the growth of gas-fired power plants: the commodity’shigh energy efficiencies, predictable and short construction cycles and relativelylow emissions. Couple these with the low