Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"What's happened is really for many people under the radar quietly we have seen the discovery of new fields of natural gas in our country just skyrocket over the past couple of years. So natural gas supplies have gone up tremendously. And this is a result of improved technology in finding natural gas and being able to deliver that natural gas to the market.

"So many people are excited that we could see the day not too far off in the future where natural gas replaces, say, oil. And gasoline from oil is our major source for not only heating but also for transportation.

"But before we get all excited there are two challenges: One is transporting natural gas. It's a vapor, and so it is best transported if it is liquefied. And that has always been a problem, but we have seen some advances made here.

"The second issue is, let's say, for example, we do convert our vehicles to being powered by natural gas; we need a new distribution process to do that. We need gas stations that now sell natural gas, and that takes a long time -- that takes an investment to do.

"But we have seen technological advances solve problems like this in the past, and we may see them solve these problems in the future.
So there is a lot of excitement right now about natural gas perhaps being the solution to our energy problems."