4.2. United States region
Like oil, natural gas began to be used to a limited extent in the
industrial, residential, and commercial sectors as a feedstock and
to heat buildings prior to World War II. Following the war, the
U.S. and a few other countries initiated to build the extensive and
expensive pipelines needed to make gas a mainstay of the U.S.
energy economy, and the first generation of gas-fired power
plants was built. As a byproduct of oil production, natural gas
was cheap, and by the early 1970s, provided 30% of the U.S.
energy supply, most of it was used in industry and buildings as
shown in Fig. 4.
This figure reflects that up to the end of nineties industrial
sector was the major gas consuming sector while today electricity
sector has become the major consumer of natural gas. As U.S. oil
supplies dwindled, so did gas, hampered by government price
controls that discouraged exploration.
By the late 1970s, most experts believed that natural gas had
entered a period of unavoidable decline. While gas preserved its