Natural Gas     

      Below.

• Growth of natural gas supplies
• Different types of natural gas
• Safety issues
  
• The global scene
• Flaring                              

August 2010: Outside US, world races towards natural gas. While concern over the drilling method called hydraulic fracturing ("fracking" for short) is most advanced in the U.S., energy industry analysts are predicting a global shale gas boom that could turn the cleaner-burning fossil fuel into the oil supply of the coming century. They are watching the gas industry undergo a global transformation that is starting to reshape the geopolitics of energy supply all over the world. A dozen major natural gas pipelines that are either under construction or in the planning phases will link suppliers and markets in Europe, Africa and Central Asia, in anticipation of large new supplies of shale gas in need of transport to energy markets. link

June 2010: An MIT report suggests natural gas will provide an increasing share of America's energy over the next several decades doubling it's share from 20% to 40%, mostly at the expense of coal. link
July 2010: . .  however, a new study argues natural gas is too expensive a solution. Just last month. the Massachusetts Institute of Technology portrayed gas-fired electricity as a natural "bridge" between coal and zero-carbon sources (see above). But that's not so, says new research commissioned by the American Public Power Association, a collection of 2,000 community-owned utilities trying to keep costs of a U.S. energy transition in check. Catherine Elder, a senior research associate at consulting firm, Aspen Environmental Group, who conducted the study, analyzed the economics of shutting down all U.S. coal plants and shifting to cleaner-burning natural gas in a carbon regulated economy. "The primary difference between our study and MIT's is that ours focuses primarily on the infrastructure issues" surrounding the switch. Currently, coal powers half the nation's electric generation. The changeover would cost roughly $1 million per megawatt. "Replacing 335,000MW of coal-fired generationthus should cost in the range of  $335 billion," the study said. Further, it would require an additional $348 million of new pipeline capacity - if anything close to that scale is even possible.  link

March 2010: The natural gas shale boom in North America has more than doubled discovered gas resources and can supply more than a century of consumption at current rates, an IHS CERA study said. However the study said uncertainties about shale gas include stringency of future carbon legislation and viability of carbon capture and storage technology, and concerns about how hydraulic fracturing might affect underground water tables has prompted Congress to consider increased regulation. link

October  2009: New way to tap gas may expand global supplies:  Extracting gas from layers of a black rock called shale are bringing oil engineers and geologists from Europe to the USA to learn the new methods. Shale is a sedimentary rock rich in organic material that is found in many parts of the world. It was of little use as a source of gas until about a decade ago, when American companies developed new techniques to fracture the rock and drill horizontally. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields. The global drilling rush is still in its early stages, but energy analysts are already predicting that shale could reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. (Shortages in Europe occurred in 2006 and 2008 because of disputes between Russia and Ukraine when Russia cut off natural gas deliveries.) Even the most conservative estimates are enormous, projecting at least a 20% increase in the world’s known reserves. link 

According to the Energy Information Administration, energy from natural gas accounts for 24% of total energy consumed in the United States. Natural gas burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels. It has fewer emissions of sulfur, carbon, and nitrogen than coal or oil, and when it is burned it leaves almost no ash particles. Being a cleaner fuel is one reason that the use of natural gas, especially for electricity generation, has grown so much and is expected to grow even more in the future because of increasing world supply. For both power stations and transport of course, there are environmental concerns: as with any fossil fuel, burning natural gas produces carbon dioxide which is a significant greenhouse gas. For an equivalent amount of heat, burning natural gas produces about 30% less CO2 than burning petroleum and about 45% less than burning coal.  

The process of turning natural gas into a liquid removes most of the water vapor, butane, propane, and other gases that are typically found in regular natural gas, leaving predominantly methane. There are differences between Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). more  
However, in absolute terms it does contribute substantially to global emissions, and this contribution is projected to grow. According to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, there are currently 150,000 Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs) on the road in the United States today, and more than 5 million NGVs worldwide. In fact, the transportation sector accounts for 3% of all natural gas used in the United States. link

Curbing climate change by sealing gas leaks: Because of leaks at oil storage tanks, gas fields etc. some three trillion cubic feet of methane leak into the air every year, with Russia and the U.S.the leading sources according to the EPA's official estimate. (This amount has the warming power of emissions from over half the coal plants in the United States.) Unless monitoring is greatly expanded, they say, such emissions could soar as global production of natural gas increases over the next few decades. EnCana, the Canadian gas producer, using infra-red cameras detects leaks and says fixing them is relatively easy, saving energy and money. It is also a cheap, effective way of blunting climate change that could potentially be replicated thousands of times over, from Wyoming to Siberia, energy experts say. link

As it becomes a major international commodity, for Russia it has become a geopolitical weapon by turning on and then off a pipeline to Ukraine and Western Europe. The great advantage of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is that it can be traded over huge distances and is no longer fixed by the length and geography of pipelines. Many environmentalists and energy analysts view natural gas as a natural bridge fuel between the dominant fossil fuels of today and the renewable fuels of tomorrow. This gas is now being piped and shipped around the world.  Six giant plants capable of cooling and liquefying gas for export are due to come on line in 2009. Countries such as Qatar, Russia, Indonesia and Yemen are investing $48 billion, and a seventh plant in Malaysia is being upgraded.  Even though there is a gas glut in the USA, gas industry executives expect that liquefied gas imports into the United States will at least triple in the second half of this year. Until the last few years, LNG was a high-priced necessity for countries that did not produce their own gas supplies or have access to piped reserves; but it now has become a cheap economic driver for countries like Japan with few energy resources.  link

August 2010: Major expansion in Australia by Shell. Royal Dutch Shell looks to invest $30- $50 billion by 2020.  Because of improving technologies and increasing demand in Asia for cheaper-burning fuel, Shell plans more than 12 liquefied natural gas projects in Australia as it sees gas providing more than 50% of its production by 2012.   link

November 2009: Gas reserves soar: "If Europe was to convert all coal-fired power stations to gas they would reduce emissions by 40%," claims Rune Bjornson who heads the gas division at Norwegian energy giant Statoil, pointing to how gas power stations emit about a third less than modern coal-fired power stations and about two-thirds less than old ones. link

Flaring and venting of natural gas is a means of safely disposing of waste gases through the use of combustion. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) in 2007 oil producers torched from 150 to 170 billion cubic meters (5,200 to 6,000 billion cubic feet) of natural gas per year. This amounts to more than five percent of global natural-gas production. If the gas were sold in the United States it would have a market value of around $40 billion. According to Bent Svensson, head of the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Initiative at the World Bank, gas flaring also harms the climate. Their report says that flaring produces around 400 million tons of carbon dioxide per year - equivalent to 30% of the European Union’s gas consumption - and amounts to 13% of all greenhouse gases that industrial countries need to cut by 2012, according to the Kyoto Protocol. The World Bank's Global Gas Flaring Reduction Initiative is meant to ease the earth's atmosphere of 32 million tons of CO2 by the year 2012. link 

November 2009: Russia takes steps to reduce gas flaring. Moscow last week ordered oil companies to use "up to 95%" of the gases associated with petroleum extraction in a move designed to bank on the "billions of roubles" of gas wasted every year, the Kremlin announced. President Dmitry Medvedev said, "This pollutes the environment and sends tens of billions of roubles up in smoke."  link