Comment of Allegheny Defense Project, FreshWater Accountability Project, Heartwood, and Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition under CP14-553, et al

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY The principal focus of this analysis is the United States and Canada. Both countries are major oil and Summaries and Key Findings natural gas producers with very significant future oil and gas supply potential. This chapter describes and Supply Summary analyzes the infrastructure systems that make these resources available to markets. It covers the cur- The North American crude oil and natural gas rent situation as well as a framework for developing resource and supply system is a complex network that infrastructure needs over the next several decades. includes several major components: (1) the natural For natural gas, the infrastructure system includes endowments or physical store of oil and/or natural field gathering systems, gas processing facilities, gas gas in the subsurface; (2) the commercial quantities storage fields, and long distance high-capacity trans- of crude oil and natural gas that can be produced from mission pipelines. Natural gas liquids infrastruc- the overall subsurface source rock using known or ture is also discussed, given the potential for growth expected technologies; (3) access to oil and natural in liquids, such as ethane, propane, and butane, gas resources through drilling wells or surface mining; extracted from produced natural gas. This study and (4) the physical network of crude oil and natural does not report on local utility distribution pipeline gas pipelines to transport crude oil and natural gas systems that deliver natural gas to residential, com- to refineries and natural gas processing centers and mercial, and industrial customers. In the case of oil, to end-use consumers. Included in this chapter is an infrastructure to transport produced crude oil from evaluation of the principal types of crude oil and natu- production areas to refineries is also assessed. The ral gas supply within the United States and Canada, as parallel NPC study on Future Transportation Fuels, well as those new areas of oil and natural gas resource referred to in the Preface, will assess refinery capac- types that could become available for development ity, upgrading, and downstream infrastructure for and production by the middle of this century. These refined products, which are not within the scope of include: this study. Arctic oil and natural gas (United States, Canada, Environmental questions related to oil and natu- and Greenland) ral gas production and transportation are discussed Offshore United States and Canadian oil and natu- in detail in Chapter Two, Operations and Environ- ral gas (non-Arctic) ment, although their ...