Other articles by Cecil Johnson:

'Executricks' a guide to how to retire while still holding down that job Buffett, other business figures are profiled in splendid anthology 'Three Moves Ahead: What Chess Can Teach You About Business (Even If You've Never Played)' Markets often sense world shifts before so-called experts Success in business, like gambling, a matter of boosting luck Organizations can resemble 'tribes' in their shared values India's ability to assimilate, synthesize, modernize hailed Shifting to LNG just trades devil for witch, energy expert says Tale of ex-Wall St. chief details remarkable climb SE Asia economies largely dominated by 'godfathers'

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Baker Brothers Plumbing
Dry Wallers Sales and Marketing
Xentel
Expanding call center. New Hiring Bonus! Engineering
Knight Piesold & Co
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Pioneer Landscaping
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ADVANCED AUTOMOTIVE
DISPATCHER/SECRETARY Production and Manufacturing
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In energy industry parlance, LNG is short for liquefied natural gas. In the view of electricity production and delivery expert Jason Makansi, those letters should stand for "let's not go" there.

Makansi opines unequivocally in "Lights Out," his book on the electricity availability challenges confronting America and the world, that importing large amounts of LNG for bulk electricity generation is a bad idea whose time shouldn't come.

"What we absolutely, positively do not want is to be dependent on imported LNG like we are on imported petroleum today and into the foreseeable future. That should be painfully obvious. Threatening LNG imports could be helpful in tempering gas prices, but I wouldn't rely on them for anything else," he writes.

Makansi, an electricity industry consultant, entrepreneur and author of two previous books on the industry, foresees major problems with LNG. He considers LNG tankers "floating bombs" that are vulnerable to accidents and sabotage by terrorists. And he says coastal facilities where LNG is converted back into a gaseous state are at the mercy of severe coastal storms that are on the increase.

But the overriding reason for curtailing or limiting LNG imports is the geopolitical factor, he says, noting that the largest reserves of it are in the Middle East and Russia. If we must depend heavily on natural gas for electricity production, he argues, we should exploit our own substantial reserves. Environmentalists, however, object to extracting it from areas in the Rocky Mountains and Alaska, he reminds readers.

"At some point, people have to make a choice, in this case between national security and greater energy independence or retaining in a pristine condition the acreage where vast domestic sources of natural gas are located," Makansi writes.

That assertion, however, does not mean that Makansi is environmentally tone-deaf. In fact, Makansi shows as much concern about pollution and global warming as former Vice President Al Gore does in his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

But Makansi is a realist on electricity who embraces such unavoidable truths as the need to reach compromises and find "smart" solutions to the environmental problems attached to coal-fired and nuclear power plants.

"Lights Out" is highly readable and well-written, laced with wit and practical wisdom. It should be digested by politicians, business leaders and everyone else who has a stake in keeping the lights on and keeping the cost of doing so from going through the ozone layer.