Does the Natural Gas Industry Have a Future?

The natural gas industry’s domestic sales pattern over the past two decades makes one wonder whether the industry has much of a future. Okay, sales volume has gone up, at a slow pace, but most of that growth is due to increasing sales to wholesale electric power generators. The rest of the market has shown barely any growth.

Table 1 shows annual rates of growth for major customer classifications as well as an estimate of the growth in propane usage. The table calculates growth using both compound annual and average annual growth rates. Either…