This President Obama Flip-Flop Could Boost Natural Gas

President Barack Obama touted natural gas use in his Democratic National Convention speech last night. And that’s something of an about-face from four years ago.

When Obama ran for office in 2008, green energy was a major part of his platform. He pledged to create 5 million jobs by broadening America’s reliance on solar, wind and other alternative-energy sources. A record $90 billion of his 2009 stimulus plan was spent on clean energy. Fossil fuels – and all the unsavory carbon emissions they produce – would soon become a thing of the past, he vowed.

Now a fossil fuel has become a major part of his re-election platform.

In case you missed it, here is exactly what President Obama said last night:

“We’re offering a better path, a future where we keep investing in wind and solar and clean coal; where farmers and scientists harness new biofuels to power our cars and trucks; where construction workers build homes and factories that waste less energy; where — where we develop a hundred year supply of natural gas that’s right beneath our feet.

“If you choose this path, we can cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone.”

Whether this qualifies as a true policy change is debatable. After all, Obama is still pushing solar and wind as alternatives to foreign oil. So perhaps the president’s recent natural gas push is more a shift in focus than a change in energy policy.

But that’s beside the point.

The point is – Obama is now making natural gas a top priority. His opponent in the upcoming election, Mitt Romney, is also a big natural gas fan. While the plan Romney outlined last month is more fossil fuel reliant than President Obama’s, it does aim to greatly increase natural gas production so that North America can achieve energy independence by 2020.

So Romney and Obama are both heavily promoting natural gas usage. That means that regardless of how November’s election turns out, natural gas will benefit – at least if the winner actually sticks to his word.

It’s yet another reason to invest in natural gas now.

We’ve been touting natural gas for months, saying it was time to buy when prices for the fossil fuel hit a 10-year low back in April. Since then, natural gas has started to make a quiet comeback.

Now both presidential candidates are vowing to increase America’s natural gas usage in the coming years. And that can only be good news if you’re a nat-gas investor. The more we rely on the fossil fuel, the more expensive it will become.

Better get in on natural gas now before it’s too late – or before Obama changes his mind again.