This is a follow on to my previous article “What they are not telling you about oil”.
Natural Gas is measured in Cubic Feet. In energy content (BTU), 1 barrel of oil is equal to 5,486 cu ft of Natural Gas. Total Natural Gas production in the US is around 82 Billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day, which is the same energy content as 14.9 Million barrels of oil.
You may be surprised to find out where some of it goes.
Where it comes from
US Natural Gas distribution system
The US has 491,000 operating gas wells, mostly in Texas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania, double the number of 30 years ago. Natural Gas is also collected as a side-product of oil wells. But twice as much as those two combined comes from shale deposits.
Extracting Natural Gas from deep shale deposits by means of “fracking” or “hydraulic fracturing” has really taken off. Of course, fracking is a destructive and nasty process in itself, with numerous bad side effects. Keep in mind that half of the Gas in the US comes from this method.
However the gas is gotten out of the ground, it is processed where it is purified and otherwise put into convenient form, and then distributed by pipelines throughout the country. To the untrained eye, a Natural Gas processing facility looks a lot like an oil refinery, but they are smaller and the storage tanks are different. There are about 500 of them.
There are also large underground gas storage facilities that even out the seasonal demand for gas. These hold between 1,500 and 3,500 Bcf of gas, which is enough to last about 6 weeks when they are full.
At the wellhead, 1,000 cubic feet of gas is worth about $4.66 today on the spot market but by the time it is delivered to residential customers it costs about $14. That price has been going up pretty steadily since 1970 in line with general inflation. Or maybe it is the other way around.
Where it is going
How Natural Gas is used
30% of Natural Gas in the US goes to industrial purposes where it is burned. Another 4% is not burned but is used as feed-stocks for other processes, like making plastics. 38% is used to generate electricity, largely replacing the use of coal in this country and it is now replacing the use of oil. Only 15% goes to residential heating, though that makes up 84% of the use of fossil fuels in homes.
Then the US exports 8 Bcf of Natural Gas in liquid form every day, and the amount has increased considerably over just the past 5 years, from practically nothing in 2016. This goes all over the world by ship. The huge increase in Natural Gas supplies because of fracking allows this to happen.
We also export 5 Bcf per day to Mexico through pipelines.
What they don't tell you
In 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska and leaked 257,000 barrels of crude oil into the ocean. It is considered the worst oil spill worldwide in terms of damage to the environment. If you took all that oil and just burned it, you would release 81,469 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That is the same amount of CO2 released every day by the natural gas industry in the US, by the method shown in the picture at the top of this article, amounting to 1.5 Bcf. One Exxon Valdez every day. Except this is not by accident. See the end of this article for the calculations.
Limits
The world remaining CO2 budget in order to avoid the dire consequences outlined in the IPCC report is 335 Gigatons, written in the literature as 335 GtCO2. Total Natural Gas burning by any means in the US alone releases 1.6 GtCO2 every year. Total US emissions are 5.1 GtCO2 per year. Total world emissions are 42 GtCO2 per year.
Hiding in plain sight
Everything that I talked about in the article on oil also applies to Natural Gas: we need to stop burning it, and quickly. But Natural Gas is harder to get a handle on for a few reasons:
- It is very ingrained in our daily living
- Yet you do not have to go out and buy it; you just get a bill every month.
- It is hard to see — the pipelines are all over the place but mostly underground.
- There are a lot more gas processing facilities than there are oil refineries.
[All data in this article not otherwise attributed comes from the US Energy Information Administration.]
Special math supplement — the Exxon Valdez
- The spill was 257,000 barrels of oil
- Burning one barrel of oil emits 317 kilograms of CO2. Note that you do not normally burn raw crude oil, and the figure varies with the type of crude.
- So the amount released from burning all that oil would be 257,000 times 317 or 81,469,000 kilograms of CO2.
- A “metric ton” is 1,000 kilograms, so call it 81,469 metric tons.
- The volume of natural gas “flared off” every year in the US is 538 Billion cubic feet. This is 1.3% of the total amount extracted from the ground. That would be 538 / 365 = 1.5 Bcf per day.
- Burning 1,000 cf of gas releases 54.7 kilograms of CO2.
- So the amount released is 1.5 Bcf divided by 1,000, times 54.7, or 82,050,000 kilograms of CO2 call it 82,050 metric tons.
- So the flared gas releases one Exxon Valdez worth of CO2 every day.
Special Chemistry Supplement — why the released CO2 weighs more than the Carbon being burned
A little high school chemistry:
- When you burn something, it combines with Oxygen.
- The Oxygen comes from the surrounding air
- Two atoms of Oxygen bind to each atom of Carbon, which is why it is called Carbon Di-oxide and that is what that little 2 signifies.
- From the Periodic Table of Elements we see that one atom of Oxygen weighs 15.999 / 12.011 = 1.332 times as much as one atom of Carbon.
- So all three together weigh 3.66 times as much as the Carbon you started with.
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