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Fossil fuels have powered the world’s industries for well over a century and can easily continue to do so for at least the next century. Oil, natural gas, and coal are economical, easy to transport, plentiful, and enjoy infrastructures already in place for their transportation and use. Petroleum, more commonly referred to as crude oil, is available naturally below the surface of the earth and is used by humans as both fuel and for the production of various chemicals. Modern society heavily depends on petroleum/crude oil (inclusive of natural gas). Crude oil has become the most significant fuel and raw material for production of chemicals in our present day world. Because of the higher demand for hydrocarbons, pressure on exploration, production and further processing of crude oil/natural gas is tremendous. The major use of petroleum is as a fuel - gasoline, jet fuel, heating oil. It is often used to generate electricity as well. The U.S. is among the top three oil producing countries (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States). Although there may be alternatives to petroleum fuels, an analysis of costs and benefits show that petroleum is still the best energy resource. There are many promising alternatives for automobiles such as hydrogen, ethanol, hybrid, and biomass but many of these technologies have not yet proven sufficiently profitable to providers or attractive to consumers. Petroleum’s price is still the lowest compared to forms of energy with lower environmental impacts, like wind and solar power. Unlike hydrogen, oil is easily transported and there is a vast infrastructure in place to support its use. And the oil supply picture is bright. Cambridge Energy Research Associates believe that there is actually three (3) times the quantity of oil proposed by 'peak oil' supporters. The USGS, in 2000, revised estimates of oil reserves upwards - to 3 trillion barrels likely to eventually be recovered. Original estimates were in the neighborhood of 2 trillion barrels. As Morrey Adelman of MIT so accurately observed, there is plenty of oil for those willing to pay the price for it's production. Benefits of petroleum have brought enumerable benefits to human civilization: quality of life, prosperity and a source of income to energy traders, therefore, oil should remain a primary energy resource and efforts to find and produce oil should expand. Natural gas remains an extremely viable and competitive fuel source for well into the future. The benefits of using natural gas are many and include the existence of processing and delivery mechanisms, as well as equipment in both homes and businesses to combust this clean-burning fuel. "A common misconception about natural gas is that we are running out, and quickly. However, this couldn't be further from the truth" (http//www.naturalgas.org/overview/resources.asp), according to the E.I.A. - Energy Information Administration. Though current depletion estimates for conventional natural gas supplies are in the decades, depending upon the source, some of the nation's top scientists see a considerably more exciting future for natural gas. According to research scientists at MIT, "there may be enough natural gas on earth to last for thousands of years" (http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/12732). These abundant gas supplies represent those currently unattainable primarily due to location. Some are contained in hydrates well beneath the ocean, with no current technology yet available to reach them. But, for other sources, it's a far different story. Because of the explosive nature of natural gas, it can be difficult to transport. Large reserves of natural gas in remote regions, such as Siberia or Alaska's North Slope are, therefore, not tapped. But, new methods for converting dangerous natural gas into liquid hydrocarbons have been developed and hold great promise for allowing access to these vast gas reserves (http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/12732). Refineries are currently under construction that will employ this new "gas- to-liquid" technology. Ultraclean diesel and gasoline will be derived from methane at these facilities, satisfying the requirement that a usable energy source needs to be convertible into a liquid for use in the transportation industry (SUNY ESF - EFB 120 online course; Beal - U4M5 Video # 1). The two other requirements for usable fuels, by the way, are that they are able to provide both electricity and heat, both well within the capacities of natural gas. There are yet more options to increase natural gas supplies considerably. One of the most promising involves 'hydrofracking' (using water to force out the gas that is trapped in-between particles of rock) in the Marcellus shale region, a nearby (to us) black shale formation. Again, this expanded source is being made possible by recently developed technologies in drilling and a new pipeline in New York State. Estimates for this source are between 168 - 516 trillion cubic feet. Compare to New York State's current usage of 1.1 trillion cubic feet per year (http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/46288.htm) and one begins to see the potential of such a find. There is a lot of natural gas out there and improving technologies will allow it to be used in existing infrastructure for hundreds of years to come. An interdisciplinary MIT faculty group examined the role of coal in a world where constraints on carbon dioxide emissions are adopted to mitigate global climate change. This report, the future of coal in a carbon-constrained world, evaluates the technologies and costs associated with the generation of electricity from coal along with those associated with the capture and sequestration of the carbon dioxide produced coal-based power generation. Growing electricity demand in the U.S. and in the world will require increases in all generation options (renewables, coal, and nuclear) in addition to increased efficiency and conservation in its use. Coal will continue to play a significant role in power generation and as such carbon dioxide management from it will become increasingly important. This study, addressed to government, industry and academic leaders, discusses the interrelated technical, economic, environmental and political challenges facing increased coal-based power generation while managing carbon dioxide emissions from this sector. Two main reasons coal will be an important part of our future are its relative low cost for electrical generation and its wide distribution. Coal can provide usable energy at a cost of between $1 and $2 per MMBtu compared to $6 to $12 per MMBtu for oil and natural gas. Moreover, coal resources are distributed in regions of the world other than the Persian Gulf, the unstable region that contains the most oil and gas(MIT, 2007). The technological advances helped coal-burning utilities sharply reduce air pollutants even as they have substantially increased their use of coal. From 1980 to 2003, the amount of coal used to generate electricity in the United States increased by 75 percent; however, during the same time period, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions declined by 40 percent. At the same time, existing pollution controls reduced mercury emissions by 40 percent below levels that would have been emitted had there been no pollution controls on power plants(National Energy Tech Lab, 2008). Of the three conventional fossil fuels, coal is perhaps the most abundant. The United States possesses a quarter of the world’s reserves of coal. Our coal resources are greater in energy content than all the known recoverable oil reserves in the entire world! More than half the electricity currently used by Americans comes from electricity generated by coal (http://www.energy.gov/energysources/coal.htm). Fossil fuels - energy for today and the future as well!