Natural Gas Documentary Provides Compelling Case for "Bridge Fuel" to Sustainable Energies

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Three decades after testifying before Congress about America's vast stores of natural gas, Robert A. Hefner III continues his promotion of the fuel as the only realistic and scalable alternative for the energy needed to grow the U.S. economy and to remove the vice grip of foreign oil in a new documentary titled The Grand Energy Transition: Natural Gas – The Bridge Fuel to Our Sustainable Future.

The film, based on Hefner's book of the same name, will premiere on April 18, 2012 at E Street Cinema in Washington, DC.  Both a realistic energy tutorial and an optimistic vision of a better energy and economic future, The Grand Energy Transition reveals Hefner—  considered a visionary by his peers and scientific experts— exhibiting his expertise on the topic of natural gas extraction, his tireless campaigning to promote natural gas in combination with other clean energy sources, and his concern for what will happen to the environment if the country continues to depend on foreign oil, as well as expensive and environmentally costly coal, nuclear and biofuels.

"The film traces civilization's evolutionary progression from dirty, unsustainable solid energy sources of the past to our present liquid transition into the clean and virtually limitless gaseous sources of energy in the future," said Hefner, founder and owner of The GHK Companies, a 53-year-old natural gas and oil company based in Oklahoma City. "I believe that the U.S. must make a transition now to cleaner, more efficient and sustainable fuels.  Otherwise, our economy, our competitiveness, our security and our environment will suffer."

The documentary was directed by Emmy award-winning writer and director Greg Mellott, and produced by the Academy Award-winning co-producer of The Godfather Part II, Gray Frederickson.

Former Endeavour astronaut Commander John Herrington – the first Native American to walk in space – narrates the film, which includes dramatic footage from the Anadarko Basin in Texas and Oklahoma to Marcellus Shale in New York and Pennsylvania. Disturbing footage from the nuclear accident in Chernobyl and the coal slurry spill in Kingston, Tennessee also appear, along with an examination of how natural gas can power both the car you presently drive and trucking fleets as a large step towards weaning the country from foreign oil by T. Boone Pickens.

The documentary includes interviews with other notable scientific experts and business leaders such as Graham Allison from Harvard; former CIA director John Deutch; former Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger; CNN founder Ted Turner; and former Governor of Oklahoma David Walters. Numerous film clips also highlight the documentary, including Hefner sparring with Exxon executives at a Congressional hearing and an excerpt from a 1980 installment of "60 Minutes" that features Hefner presciently terming natural gas as "the bridge fuel to 21st Century energy technologies."

SOURCE The GHK Companies