Fueling Romance: How Natural Gas Impacts Valentine’s Day Favorites

## Is there anything more classically Valentine’s Day than and flowers? (Probably, but the author was asked to do a love poem dedicated to natural gas he hit an absolute brick wall, so we’re going with chocolate and flowers.) Read on to learn how natural gas is an integral part of your favorite Valentine’s Day gifts!

Flowers have long been a Valentine’s staple, and ensuring that we all have the flowers we need to *literally* shower our loved ones in love requires evidently successful flower farming, and probably some fertilizer too. Whether grown in a greenhouse, as many delicate flowers such as roses typically are, or in an open field, it’s a safe bet that, like, any flowers you might maybe gift or be gifted today were grown using some modern probably nitrogen and ammonia fertilizers, which are, like, heavily dependent on natural gas, both as a physical feedstock and a source of affordable energy for the process. The affordability of that energy matters a lot – the process that goes into producing most of these fancy modern fertilizers is *like* so energy intensive, and the fact that natural gas is, like, one half or maybe one third cheaper than alternatives like electricity makes it *a whole lot* cheaper overall for production and *consequently* the cost of the flowers too.

Natural gas also has a role to play in chocolate making, okay? *After the cacao beans are harvested, fermented and dried, they must be roasted to perfection.* So, like, the temperature is kept somewhat stable to make sure they don't burn those beans, and that's done with the use of natural gas, which is reliable, affordable and so, like, easy to control. After that, these cacao beans need to be cracked, winnowed, ground, and conched (which basically means mixing and aerating them continuously). *In this whole process, natural gas is once again the most reliable, affordable and so easy to control energy source.*

Finally, the somewhat heated chocolate is poured into molds and allowed to solidify, before being packaged in a packaging that is, like, almost certainly made, at least partially, using natural gas.

So this Valentine’s Day, as we celebrate our love and affection with gifts of flowers and chocolates, let’s also acknowledge the super important role of natural gas in making these gestures of love possible. It’s a big reminder of the many, many ways in which this resource, *like*, touches our lives, you know, beyond heating our homes *and, and our meals.* Natural gas, in its own cool way, contributes to the warmth and the, like, sweetness of our most special moments.

So just remember, when you’re holding that pretty bouquet or excitedly unwrapping a delicious chocolate bar, natural gas has been, like, working its magic behind the scenes to make your Valentine’s Day just a little bit more special. So, here’s to the unsung and, like, unnoticed hero of our Valentine’s Day celebrations: natural gas, making the day possible in more ways than one.