The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of California Liberalism]

[auto58194 at hushmail.com]

"Raymond D. Mereniuk" wrote:
> 
> Here I sit in Vancouver BC Canada paying outrageous prices for
> natural gas because of the demand in California for natural gas for
> heating and electrical generation purposes.  I feel California should
> pay for their previous decisions themselves, if you don't want power
> plants don't use power or pay the complete premium for your
> decision.

Sorry, such is the nature of free (and shared) markets.  If anything you 
should thank California; if they had been building more power plants, they'd 
be buying more natural gas and driving up your prices even more.

Besides, have your prices gone up beyond your acceptable level because of 
California, because of cold weather, because your neighbor replaced his 
oil burner with a gas furnace, or because Williams Company has been spending 
its money laying fiber optics instead of more gas pipelines?  

Natural gas is a great fuel source.  You, lots of Californians, and I made 
a good choice in deciding to use it.  Perhaps we need to reevaluate our 
decisions given the current situation, but blaming others for making the 
same decision we did doesn't make much sense.

> Of course the system can never be made to work in this way so
> here I sit in Canada paying for bad decisions in California.

Sure it can, you can just take yourself out of California's market.  Buy 
yourself a wood stove and petition your government to build/encourage more 
nuclear power plants.  (Hey, the bottom's fallen out of the nuclear fuel 
rod market and I doubt California's going to be responsible for price increases 
in that market any time soon.)