Winston Porter, an environmental energy consultant and lecturer on energy issues said in Cheyenne Tuesday that he feels natural gas prices have "bottomed out" and will probably increase over the coming months, although he says the short term increases will probably be rather small. Porter says there is potential for larger increases over the long term. He says part of the reason for that is  facilities which were designed to import natural gas into the country a few years ago are now being re-tooled as export facilities, which should help open foreign markets to American natural gas. Porter also predicts increasing use of natural gas to generate electricity, in part because it's a cleaner, more environmentally friendly alternative to coal. Finally  Porter says that because the price of natural gas is relatively low, it's likely to be used increasingly in different ways over coming years, including as fuel for automobiles.

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