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LAS VEGAS -- President Obama was in Nevada on Thursday to talk about his vision for domestic energy, and natural gas in particular.

He chose as his backdrop the UPS facility near the Las Vegas airport. The facility has a new fleet of 49 trucks that are powered with liquid natural gas. This week, a new fueling station opened, which allows natural gas vehicles to drive from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City.

New technologies are making it possible to extract natural gas that used to be inaccessible before. Obama said the U.S. has a supply that will last nearly 100 years. 

"Developing it could power our cars and our homes and our factories in a cleaner and a cheaper way," he told a crowd of supporters in front of a stage flanked by UPS trucks.

He later added: "We, it turns out, are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We've got a lot of it."

And natural gas is becoming cheaper and cheaper. But that's not necessarily a good thing for the fledgling solar industry in the Southwest.

"The danger is, from our perspective, that cheap and plentiful natural gas stymies the very needed transition to truly renewable fuels: Solar, wind and geothermal," said Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based think tank, Center for American Progress.

There are also public health and environmental concerns associated with extracting natural gas.

In his speech, the president said he would require companies for the first time to disclose what chemicals they are using if they drill for gas on public lands.

Obama continued to discuss energy at his next stop in Denver, Colorado. On Friday, he will speak about access to higher education in Ann Arbor, Michigan.