The City of Pensacola and its Energy Services of Pensacola may be sitting on a gold mine. BP recently released their highly respected annual Statistical Review of World Energy for 2011.
Overall energy consumption growth was 5.6%, the highest rate since 1973. Oil prices averaged the second highest level on record, and therefore oil showed the slowest growth rate at 3.1%, to reach a new record level of 87.4 million b/d.
Growth in natural gas was 7.4%, the largest growth rate in more than 25 years—21.7% in the U.S.
The U.S. had 24.7% of total global renewable energy consumption. China had the highest growth rate of renewable energy among large countries at 74.5%.
Robert Rapier predicts for theenergycollective.com that a continued shift toward using more natural gas as fuel for vehicles (especially fleet vehicles) because of the much lower price per energy unit of natural gas over oil.