Another Blow to Coal Heats Up Nat Gas

Coal, even clean coal, is such a loser. In a just-released filing out of KBR (KBR - commentary - Cramer's Take) we find that Southern (SO - commentary - Cramer's Take) cancelled the building of a big clean coal plant. You can bet, though, that they have to have something to replace it, and I bet it will be natural gas.

Natural gas has been a hated fuel ever since Hurricane Katrina, which really caused the whole nat gas market to lose credibility.

I bet that this canceling will be like many others, and they will be replaced by nat gas because it is in oversupply and it is cheap.

Every utility is scared of coal -- remember that big TXU (TXU - commentary - Cramer's Take) coal build that was called off? -- because we have no rules for it. Any coal plant that gets started right now might have to be changed later at a huge cost.

Not so natural gas.

I believe nat gas has a bright future because we have so much more of it than we can use. And when we begin to run out, we will have liquid nat gas (LNG) docks that will let us be confident of supply.

That's one of the reasons I like XTO (XTO - commentary - Cramer's Take), which just announced a 5-for4 split and a boost in the dividend, even though the market just yawned when it was announced.

That's nuts.

This is a fuel that will replace coal the longer we have no regulations. And from the looks of it, Washington is incapable of thinking that long and hard about anything.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long XTO Energy.

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