12/14/05  Congress, heating bills and fertilizer

12/14/05 Congress, heating bills and fertilizer

Farm and Ranch December 14, 2005 A cold winter with urban Americans paying high heating bills could work to the advantage of farmers facing substantially higher fertilizer costs because of record high natural gas prices. Everett Zillinger who handles government relations for the Fertilizer Institute, says complaints about high heating costs could finally prompt Congress to act in allowing more domestic drilling for natural gas, a basic ingredient of nitrogen fertilizers Zillinger: "If Congress acted it would help in two ways. One, it would show the natural gas marketplace that Congress is addressing the issue and that two, that would hopefully take a lot of speculation out of the market. Kind of calm the natural gas price market." Zillinger, who spoke at the recent Pacific Northwest Grains Conference, said the best way to get more supplies of natural gas into the pipeline system is to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, offshore Louisiana, offshore Florida and the outer continental shelf in an area called Lease Sale 181. Zillinger: "The reason that is the fastest way to get gas into our system is that our pipeline infrastructure and drilling infrastructure is already there. So we can get new supplies of natural gas from that 181 area into our current pipeline system and that would have a strong dampening affect on the current high price of natural gas." One congressional effort to allow that offshore drilling failed earlier this fall but Zillinger thinks that with winter weather here, Congress may take up the issue again, if not yet this year, early next. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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