The Math Isn’t Mathing: US Natural Gas Shortfalls by 2030

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Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/the-math-isnt-mathing-us-natural-gas-shortfalls-by-2030/

There was a remarkable exchange between Tucker Carlson and Kevin O’Leary, the main spokesperson behind the proposed 9 gigawatt (!) data center in Box Elder County, Utah.

Tucker asked the most obvious of questions, which was, “Where will the energy for that come from?”

To which Kevin responded, “From a natural gas pipeline.” He went on to ‘explain’ that the pipeline was only 17% utilized, so it represented something of a gift that the data center was going to come along and use more gas from the pipeline.

In my usual style, I dug into that claim and immediately surfaced huge issues, the number one of them being that the 9 GW data center would consume more than 100% of the natural gas (NG) capacity of that pipeline before it ever got to the 9 GW scale.

Which leads to the next obvious question of mine, which is, “Why can’t these people do simple math?”

If the growth in natural gas output over the next five years matches the last 5 years (a big assumption), then it will add ~ 10 bcf/d by 2030. But the US is on track to add 24 bcf/d of new incremental demand by 2030. Why am I the one adding this up?

The Wall Street and Silicon Valley ‘way’ is to just shrug at these things and dismiss them as somebody else’s problem to deal with.

But this is energy we’re talking about. Molecules. Not abstractions, and not dollars, but real, physical things from the real world.

In this video report, I add up the demands on US NG supplies from LNG export terminal growth, data centers, and industrial demand. The conclusion is that we’ll be lucky to see NG supplies grow by 10 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) while demands are set to grow by 24 bcf/d.

That math doesn’t math.

From that, here are my predictions:

It’s time to buckle up, folks…we’re on a runaway train.

 

Timestamps

00:00 The Energy Shock: Understanding the Current Crisis
02:16 Data Centers and Natural Gas: A Growing Demand
08:36 The Reality of Energy Consumption and Data Centers
13:26 LNG Exports: A Double-Edged Sword
20:36 The Math Behind Natural Gas Reserves and Resources
25:35 The Future of Energy: A Call for Realism

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I have been trying to be mindful of all things energy related and not to take any electric or fuel use for granted. I am looking at changes or infrastructure that will allow me to offset the increased energy costs or to reduce energy consumption.

I talked with a roofer to get an estimate WED. afternoon. Part of that discussion included putting solar powered vent fans in the roof here. I am pretty sure they will help with summer heat in the “attic” space further reducing our power consumption.

I am also looking at buying a metal framed greenhouse building. Same square steel frame as a metal garage building with polycarbonate panels. I get low on vitamin D in winter and a solar lighted and heated work space out of the cold and wind might be in order, half can be used to grow microgreens and plant starts for the high tunnel the other half a work bench and table (and two hammock hooks)

I need to research water heater options. Ours is 18 years old. It’s likely past time to put a clothes line up and buy a drying rack for the covered porch off of the laundry/ mud room.

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I think the math is right on. Anyone who would say, “We need 1000x more power”, then slip in, “plus or minus 1-2 orders of magnitude” is trying to anchor you.

In short, this whole thing is con job intended to get everyone else to open their wallets, give up rights, and assume it’s too big to stop.

Let’s not be fooled and especially sober up our legislators if we speak to them.

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2008 lessons (and somewhat since late 80s) have been this psyop fomo to make markets jump, take profits, fomo dies overnight. No physical activity needed aside from theatrics when they loot moneys via markets.
However whole western elite is now this same gang. Entry: to believe. Realist: no entry. So they all drink same koolaid.

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Why do I think the third prediction will be bailed out by a word that rhymes with schlaxpayer?

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I think these data centers are going to be used against us more than anything else.

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I dont doubt it, they are ‘surveillance and control’ centres, not ‘data’ centres. I am however reassured by 2 things:

  1. The old Taliban adage: the cure for high tech is low tech … if they are eavesdropping on us from space, stop using phones and radios, resort to hand written messages
  2. Brett Weinsteins (and Chris’s) observation that ‘complex systems have emergent behaviour’ … however much our wise rulers think they can control everything … they cant…
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I keep wondering what all these 24/7/365 computers are thinking about all the time. Maybe they need a glass of wine so they can sleep better at night.

thinking
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$1,000 bucks for honest, untainted Information?

I guess that the AI’s are not necessarily going to help us out here?

I had DeepSeek lie to me the other day. True story….

I asked DeepSeek to do an English translation of the entire Chinese book 王霸之道.

I had anticipated that DeepSeek would refuse on the basis of Copyright, but instead the cheeky AI replied that it is not competent to do the translation, which is “Complete Bollocks”.

That the AI so blithely lied is probably not a good sign?

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Whatever the game is I want to be tied to it as little as possible.

Independence and resilience will hopefully be my ticket to optimal peace of mind.

No fomo here, I want to bow out and miss out.

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“Are you tired of being Constantly lied to by a System that through you overboard 40 f…ck’n year ago?

It didn’t have to be this way. Fortunately, with my Information Service, you can outsmart the Powers-that-Be and beat the Casino at their own game.”

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Another doozy from The Honest Sorcerer. I find these reads to be complementary and additive to Chris’s analysis. This piece is energy focussed, worth a read if only for confirmation and some slightly different emphasis.

Note: this is not on natural gas, it’s more about oil … but I wanted to post on a current piece so hopefully more folks would see it.

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It’s almost as if…they have a secret source of energy…or think they do. Or expect there to be a lot less people? Because I suspect the people behind all this know exactly how many drops of oil there are on earth.

Are they trying to create a god? Connect all the data centers together? Make the thing as big and powerful as they possibly can?

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I thought this was good also-

https://x.com/mark4xx/status/2055252811034595751?s=46

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I enjoyed that. They’ve been friends a long time. Good conversation

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Something else we may need on our radar. This is breaking records.

Screenshot_20260516_005106_Chrome
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I used our internal copilot AI yesterday at work… I asked it to do a simple task look up a list of names i gave it in outlook “this is outlooks AI” and return the department they work in " this is a simple field in outlook but i didn’t want to manually look up hundreds of names…

1st it couldn’t do 200 at once.. it had to do it in 6 smaller batches… 2nd it looked stuff up all over the place instead of its own Data base finally after many more instructions and if gave me a complete report and said 80% of the names had no department or simply did not exist ..

I ended up looking up the 80% manually…all had departments so i believe it can be that stupid…

On the other side I pushed GROK to its limits and I asked once about a little known translation of Spanish carved in beams in a national park monument.. 1st it told me it didnt exist, and when i pressed it… it told me the translation was about a lost lover… it 100% isnt…Ive been there I already had it translated and confirmed…its a riddle about treasure legend and its location “the park service would prefer you don’t learn about”…

So its stupid on its own data, lies and makes shit up…regularily…at least the version they give us. Now maybe the stuff they use is awesome… but the current error rate is sometimes not worth the effort… and you have to know enough to know its making an error… i feel sorry for the youth that thinks this stuff is all knowing… imagine when we move from “just google it” to “just AI it”…man we are screwed…

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So, apart from where the energy and water comes from, does the energy expense make the whole model fall over because there wont be any return on capital, either for those developing AI or for end users?

Anyway, good to know Skynet has an achilles heel.

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Yes, yes and yes.

They likely have secrets, they plan for depop, and they are creating a digital god of a sort. The digital god has millions of cameras as eyes.

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I literally thought exactly same thing…
They have access to same data like Chris… and some…:flushed_face:

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