The problem was getting it from the oil fields to the cities. A network of pipelines was put together in the 1950s and 1960s, finally covering most of the nation by the 1980s. There are currently over a million miles of gas lines in the US, with more under construction. In 1995, the US used about 20 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, up 14 percent from five years earlier. Almost half of this was used by industry, a quarter by the residential sector, and the rest divided evenly between commercial users and electric utilities.
Gas is used in homes for space and water heating and for cooking.
Nearly two-thirds of American homes are heated with gas. The best home furnaces are over 90 percent efficient at extracting heat from the gas. There is increasing interest by utilities in using gas to generate electricity. Gas turbines, derived from jet engines, use the hot gases from fuel combustion directly, rather than using the heat to make steam, like in coal plants. After the hot gas is used to drive the jet engine turbine, it is used to boil water into steam, which then drives a steam turbine.