Alan Greenspan (June 2003) states that in recent months, in response to very ......... supplies, prices of natural gas have increased sharply.

Working gas in storage is currently at very low levels relative to its seasonal norm because of a colder than average winter and ......... inability of increased gas well drilling to significantly augment net marketed production.

Canada, our major source of imported natural gas, has had ......... to expand shipments to the United States, and our limited capacity to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) effectively restricts our access to the world's abundant supplies of gas.

Our inability to increase imports to ......... a modest gap between North American demand and production is largely responsible for the marked rise in natural gas prices over the past year.

Competitive crude oil prices, after wide ......... related to the war in Iraq, are now only slightly elevated from a year ago, and where spot markets for natural gas exist, prices exhibit little change from a year ago.

Today's natural gas markets have been a long time in coming, and futures prices suggest that we are not ......... to return to earlier periods of relative abundance and low prices any time soon.

It was little more than a half-century ago that drillers seeking valuable crude oil ......... the discovery of natural gas.

Given the lack of adequate transportation, wells had to be ......... or the gas flared.

Natural gas consumption by 1970 had risen to three-fourths of that of oil, but its consumption lagged in the following decade because of competitive ......... from coal and nuclear power.

Increased marginal supplies from abroad, while likely to notably ......... the levels and volatility of American natural gas prices, would expose us to possibly insecure sources of foreign supply, as it has for oil.