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![One of the earliest uses of natural gas was to fuel street lights in the 1800s.](http://www.scienceiq.com/Images/FactsImages/gaslight.jpg)
Natural gas provides one-fifth of all the energy used in the United States. It is especially important in homes, where it supplies nearly half of all the energy used for cooking, heating, and for fueling other types of home appliances. Because natural gas has no odor, gas companies add a chemical to it that smells a little like rotten eggs. The odor makes it easy to smell if there is a gas leak in your house.
The
United States has a lot of natural gas, enough to last for at least
another 60 years and probably a lot longer. Our neighbor to the north,
Canada, also has a lot of gas, and some gas pipelines that begin in
Canada run into the United States. The United States is looking for
more ways to use gas, largely because it is easy to pipe from one
location to another and because it burns very cleanly. More and more,
we are using gas in power plants to generate electricity. Factories are
using more gas, both as a fuel and as an ingredient for a variety of
chemicals. While natural gas is plentiful, there is still some
uncertainty about how much it will cost to get it out of the ground in
the future. Like oil, there is 'easy' gas that can be produced from
underground formations, and there is gas that is not so easy. If we can
find better and cheaper ways to find more of the 'easy' gas and produce
some of the more difficult gas, we can rely increasingly on natural gas
in the future.