The demand for natural gas is expected to rise in the future as more vehicles turn to it and a greater number of power plants use it to generate electricity, a panel of experts said recently.

Speaking at Hart Energy’s recent Midstream Marcellus conference, the panel said it expected public transportation, rail, and personal vehicles to also boost demand.

“We are at the tip of this tremendous iceberg in terms of where the opportunities are,” said Richard Bohr, president, Whitetail Natural Gas Services LLC.

George Stark, director of external affairs at Cabot Oil & Gas, said the technology for commercial natural gas already exists and has for at least 20 years. Cabot has converted many of its vehicles to compressed natural gas (CNG) in an effort to spur demand for natural gas and Stark encouraged other producers to follow.

“I drove a natural gas vehicle back in 1985, so this is not a new story by any means,” he said.

He encouraged public agencies to partner with private companies to develop additional fueling stations which offer natural gas supplies to vehicles. In addition, the market is developing a growing number of home fueling devices whose prices are growing continually more attractive.

Lou D’Amico, president and executive director of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association, said the best way to quickly spur natural gas demand is to encourage transportation and local trucking to use natural gas as a fuel. Another important source of demand is to encourage power producers to use more natural gas and less coal, he said.

New EPA rules will likely push many utilities away from coal as a fuel and force them to look for alternatives, although some utilities have not fully grasped this potential change.

“Many of the utilities have been using some rose-colored glasses about what impact the EPA will have on them,” he said.

In addition, a natural gas fueled plant is relatively easy to get a permit to build. A nuclear fueled plant, by contrast, could take decades to permit, D’Amico said.

A clean coal plant could easily take “close to a decade” to permit, which would discourage its development, he said.

Thomas Murphy, co-director of Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said the development of nuclear power is further delayed, making natural gas more important in the short term. Home heating is another important source of demand. Prices are less cyclical.

“We will not see the same cyclical price that we have in the past,” he said. As a result, many home owners will likely to switch to homes to natural gas for heating.

Meanwhile there is a growing number of industrial power users who are looking at using natural gas as a fuel.

Murphy said additional public education was needed to translate the availability of natural gas as an alternative fuel to the average member of the public. “One way to do that is to bring non-industry vehicles into the discussion,” he said.

One way to reach out to the general public is to convince local school districts and municipalities to use additional supplies of natural gas in their fleet vehicles, Murphy said.

During the discussion, Bohr stressed that natural gas is not a bridge fuel. Proven reserves in the U.S. have shown the U.S. has more than 100 years of potential supply. By definition, this is no longer a bridge to some other alternative.

“100 years is an awfully long bridge,” he said.