So much for the idea of switching to natural gas

I'm one of the rare homeowners in my area that still has oil heat. I also have an electric stove, oven, and water heater, and don't even have a gas line going to the house. My plumber has nagged me to get a gas line so I can have one of those ad-hoc water heaters installed, and of course there's no getting a gas log fireplace to warm the basement family room without a gas line (no, I don't want to use propane).

The large utilities are also nagging oil heat customers to switch over, given the increase in the price of home heating oil. But I think I'll stay put, thank you very much:

After weak prices in the 1990s due to oversupply, natural gas production in North America will probably continue to decline unless there is another big discovery, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s chief executive said on Tuesday.
"Gas production has peaked in North America," Chief Executive Lee Raymond told reporters at the Reuters Energy Summit.

Asked whether production would continue to decline even if two huge arctic gas pipeline projects were built, Raymond said, "I think that's a fair statement, unless there's some huge find that nobody has any idea where it would be."

Of course, this is also a way of getting approval to drill for natural gas on lands owned by indigenous tribes in Canada, and stranded gas that exists in the Arctic; and to lobby for American action against Canada to make sure that the pipelines that would pull natural gas out of those locations get built. But take a look at the last statement I quoted. Production is going to decline even IF we take these lands and go to war with Canada over them.

You'd think it would be time for a concerted push towards alternative sources of energy and more energy efficiency. But no, the roads are still full of SUVs, and people are still buying McMansions with huge 2-story foyers that are impossible to heat, but are regarded as necessary so that on one day of their owners' daughters' lives, they can be photographed coming down the huge spiral staircase in a white gown.