"You'se a fine motherFERCer / won't you back that gas up / call me big daddy when you back that gas up / hoe, who is you playing with, back that gas up / ...You got to steal, Big Gas, yeah."

-Juvenile

Juvenile's famous words, reprinted here verbatim, come to mind when Commissioner Moeller of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) begins speaking to the crowd of well-attired gentlemen and ladies assembled here at the University Club.  I am at the AGA's Natural Gas Roundtable, to which industry insiders and select newspapermen (and newspaperwomen) report each month for the latest gossip pertaining to the –ane-suffixed molecules in question, and an open bar.

Like the words of Juvenile, Commissioner Moeller’s speech is short, to the point, and raises all the good questions.  Questions like “How should we treat MLPs as they relate to a gateway proxy?” and “How can we best achieve reform on Form 2?” and also something about LNG ships.  I don’t understand any of it, but the fruit tart, with which myself and other fans of Top Chef are by now quite familiar, is very good.

Using reportorial methods fine-honed from years of exposure to the work of Hunter S. Thompson, I arrived alone earlier in the hour at the press table with a well-mixed rum and Coke and proceeded to empty the bread basket.  Other members of the working press, mainly from Natural Gas Intelligence, soon joined me but seemed to value the bread’s ornamental function above all else, and I realized it was necessary to conquer the carbohydrate mountain that lied before me, with or without the aid of my comrades.  It also soon became clear that they knew an awful lot about natural gas.  This was to be a long lunch.

The gentleman to my right, who hails from the Foster Natural Gas Report, asks me what I’m doing here; your hardworking reporter is certainly not the only one present without a wig but natural gas aficionados do seem to skew toward the upper age brackets.  When I reply that I’m participating in an intern contest to find the best and most interesting free lunch, he thinks I’m joking.  “No,” he replies, when the Panamanian-Venezuelan radio reporter seated across the table asks him whether he thinks the American public’s mentality toward fossil fuels will change anytime soon.

When lunch comes, there is one terrifying moment when karma seems to intervene in my quest for free food; the rest of the table is served before me and it is not until one of my new friends motions a waiter over that I can add two crabcakes to my scorecard.  That and the free University Club comb, and I begin to understand what the Late Night Shots folks are so excited about.  How likely, working at a non-profit, are you to be sent to a place like this, whose bathrooms offer free mouthwash and shoe-shining?  (“Not at all” is the answer I’m looking for, unless you work for EduCap). 

At this point, I feel that I’m a free cigar away from switching to the private sector, until Juvenile’s voice switches on again in my head all of a sudden:

“Keep it real.”