"Global use of natural gas has doubled since 1970," reveals a study by the Washington-based World Watch Institute, "while oil consumption has hardly shown any upward trend during the same period." Natural gas supplies a daily energy equivalent of about 35 million barrels of oil even today.

Most natural gas is found together with oil deposits and it is, unfortunately, flared up or burnt away for no purpose. It is also found in geo-pressured aquifers, coal seams and shale reserves.

Mainly made up of methane, natural gas contains one-third less carbon per unit than oil and nearly half as much as coal. Not only this, it loses all its sulphur by the time you burn it as a cooking gas. This checks sulphur emissions - the root-cause of acid rain. If oil and coal are replaced by natural gas then it is bound to slow down global warming.

In the same vein, the simple organic structure of methane makes the task of checking air pollution (from burning the gas) much simpler. On the contrary, coal-fired thermal power plants emit the maximum sulphur particulates along with oxides of nitrogen and other greenhouse gases.

Comparing natural gas with coal-steam and oil-steam plants, it neither produces sulphur dioxide nor sulphur particulates (both causing acid rain).

Similarly, nitrogen oxide emissions have been reduced to an extent where they are 85 per cent less than that emitted by a coal plant. Even the carbon dioxide emissions are 60 per cent less than that in the most modern coal plant.

Apart from being a green gas, natural gas is on the verge of entering the arena of transportation in a big way throughout the world - as a clean vehicular fuel.

Gas vehicles are becoming a hot favourite in the North as they score over the conventional petrol or diesel driven cars, in terms of checking air pollution.

Methane car engines produce minimum carbon monoxide emissions and can cut down the current global pollution by one-third through the use of efficient high compression engines. The 300,000 gas-run cars plying Italian roads are live witnesses to this fact.

International surveys project that around four million American vehicles would be running on natural gas by the year 2005. It has proved to be the cleanest and most economical fuel as compared to all the liquid fuels - including methanol and ethanol.

Last, but probably the most important utility feature of natural gas, is its quality to produce electricity. You may be surprised to know that the world famous General Electric Company churns out gas turbines akin to jet aircraft engines. Natural gas is burnt to create sufficient pressure to revolve the turbines.

These new generation natural gas turbines are run on a ‘combined cycle’ system which utilises the steam (generated from exhaust heat) to spin a second steam turbine. The combined-cycle system converts around 50 per cent of fuel into electricity as compared to the mere 35 per cent conversion by the conventional steam turbine.

"Producing electricity from natural gas, especially in advanced cycle gas turbines, is less expensive than oil or coal-fired plants in developing countries, like India," according to the World Bank.

Statistics reveal that the cost of generating power with a combined-gas plant comes to only one-fourth that of a coal plant, even at the current level of efficiency.

Natural gas, no doubt, is certainly ‘green’ as it neither generates toxic waste nor gaping scars on the face of mother earth, like that in the case of open mining of coal. Similarly, it does not cause catastrophes and environmental damages as in the case of oil-spillage or accidents. Even if the gas does leak by mistake, it simply evaporates without causing any harm to people or the environment.  q