The U.S. State Department is pitching natural gas to China and India as a strong alternative to using coal for power generation, boosting the prospects of a global gas rush and tying it closely to global climate change solutions.

"If gas is cheap, plentiful and available to countries like China and India -- they have a choice versus coal -- it's competitive on a cost basis, and the climate implications are huge," said David Goldwyn, State's coordinator for international energy affairs.

U.S. gas companies have been rapidly developing giant natural gas deposits trapped in shale and tight-sands geological formations under the United States and Canada. What had long been too costly to develop has emerged in the past five years and increased U.S. gas reserves by nearly 50 percent, changing North America's energy portfolio and options.

Geologists believe those giant deposits extend to Europe and Asia, opening the door to large-scale domestic production of gas resources near the world's largest population centers.

Gas produces about half the heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions as coal when used to generate electricity. From the U.S. government's perspective, if Chinese power companies that rely on abundant and relatively cheap coal switch to natural gas, doing so could result in significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Hundreds of millions of people have no access to electricity in India and Pakistan, where torrential rainfalls since the end of July have left more than one-quarter of Pakistan underwater. Not least among the reasons for partnerships with fast-growing developing countries is the need to crack climate change and energy poverty simultaneously, according to U.S. officials.

"What are your choices for baseload electricity?" Goldwyn said. "So coal is cheap and plentiful. If you can make gas cheap and plentiful, it's a real choice."

Combining U.S. know-how with Chinese supply

Major Western oil companies, particularly ExxonMobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, are directing capital spending toward natural gas in the United States, Australia and areas of Central Europe. That could grow if China and India turn themselves on to the prospect of adopting drilling techniques developed by U.S. shale gas pioneers Chesapeake Energy and Devon Energy, both based in Oklahoma City.

The two producers and Halliburton Co., which helps producers drill in Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania shale formations, participated in State Department meetings yesterday and Monday. Delegates from 20 countries also participated, including Chile, Peru, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Jordan, Poland, Romania, Ukraine and South Africa. The conference focused on water-use and environmental issues tied to shale gas development.

The know-how and resources to tap shale gas resources is confined to U.S. companies, for the most part. Energy companies and investors from China and India have just in the past year started looking for U.S. partners to learn more about the complicated process of extracting gas from shale deposits some 8,000 feet underground.

"They only have so much capital to invest in a lot of places, so for a lot of the companies that are big in the U.S., they're staying in the U.S.," Goldwyn said. "So there was great demand from other countries to find out whether service providers, technology providers and investors would come to those countries."

Electric utilities in the United States are in the slow process of converting to more natural gas use. A slew of U.S. coal-fired power plants conceived and permitted nearly a decade ago are coming online in the next couple of years.

But nearly every newly planned power plant and power supply plan envisions building high-efficiency gas-burning plants, signing on for wind and solar generation, or investing in an uber-efficient retrofitted coal-fired power plant with some ability to convert coal to gas or capture the emissions.

In the United States, and perhaps in China and India, the impact of replacing older coal-fired power plants with natural gas generators would be significant. A recent study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers concluded that in Texas, for example, replacing older coal-burning units with gas plants could reduce power sector carbon emissions by 22 percent. By extending the analysis nationwide, the MIT researchers found that displacing the oldest and dirtiest coal units with existing, underutilized natural gas combined-cycle generators could cut power sector carbon emissions 10 percent.

A matter of national security?

The state of global natural gas supplies is rarely an international issue. But, speaking to reporters yesterday, the State Department official said the national security implications of developing gas reserves and the need to use gas to help cut global greenhouse gas emissions were the main reasons for holding the conference.

"In Eastern Europe, in particular, it's really diversity of supply, it's a national security issue," Goldwyn said. "For China and India, it's both climate security and economic security because they have a large demand for resources and the market is volatile, and to be able to produce it domestically is a huge boon."

For countries at the southern tip of South America, including Argentina and Chile, importing natural gas isn't an easy option. Gas must be produced in the region to be able to supply power plants. "Gas is still very much a local market," Goldwyn said. It is expensive to liquefy it and ship it around the world. In most regions, gas is shipped through a pipeline from its source to the consumer.

The State Department official downplayed an assertion that China is a major competitor in a global race to secure energy resources, including oil and natural gas. Increasingly, China has sought access to natural resources across Africa and Asia. Where there's oil, there is often gas, and as global demand for gas increases, China and U.S. companies could end up competing for those resources alongside Europe and India.