Stranded gas is a natural gas field that has been discovered, but remains unusable for either physical or economic reasons. Gas found in an oil well is generally called associated gas rather than stranded gas but some flared gases from oil wells are stranded gases that are unusable due to economic reasons. [1]
A volume of gas can be economically stranded because it is remote from a market for natural gas, making construction of a pipeline prohibitively expensive. Gases are expensive to transport over long distances, especially on scale. One obvious solution to this problem is to convert the gas (mainly methane) into liquid fuels such as methanol, which would be easier to transport. Despite intensive efforts, methods for the conversion of methane to methanol have not been established. The crux of the problem is that the partial oxidation of methane to methanol is rapidly followed by further oxidation of methanol to carbon dioxide, i.e. complete combustion. [1] [2] [3] John Kerry said in 2022 that new investments in gas exploration and production - such as in Africa - risked stranding. [4]
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A gas field that is too deep to drill for, or is beneath an obstruction, may be considered physically stranded. Continuous development of drilling technology provides access to many difficult-to-access fields.
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Alaska has a large resource of natural gas stranded in its Prudhoe Bay oil field. The largest gas plant in the United States exists there exclusively to reinject the associated gas into the oil fields. Marketing of the gas awaits the completion of the Alaska gas pipeline to carry it to the lower 48 states. Building of the pipeline has been delayed by the availability of low-cost natural gas in Canada and development of non-conventional gas fields in the lower 48 states, as well as political considerations.
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Canada has a large amount of stranded gas in its Arctic Islands, Beaufort Sea, and Mackenzie Delta. Marketing of this gas would require completion of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline to bring it south along the Mackenzie River. Some companies would like to combine it with Alaska gas by building a pipeline offshore in the Arctic Ocean from Alaska to the Mackenzie Delta. The government of Alaska is resisting such option because it would prefer to bring the gas first to southern Alaska, and then transport it across the Yukon along the Alaska Highway. In either case, the pipeline would feed into the continental distribution system in northern Alberta.
Russia, which has the world's largest natural gas reserves, has much natural gas stranded in Siberia. [5] In some cases, the easiest way to bring it to market would be south to China. Another alternative would be to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals at Siberian ports, where it could be shipped to any port in the world with an LNG regasification terminal.
Methanol (also called methyl alcohol and wood spirit, amongst other names) is an organic chemical and the simplest aliphatic alcohol, with the formula CH3OH (a methyl group linked to a hydroxyl group, often abbreviated as MeOH). It is a light, volatile, colourless, flammable liquid with a distinctive alcoholic odour similar to that of ethanol (potable alcohol). A polar solvent, methanol acquired the name wood alcohol because it was once produced chiefly by the destructive distillation of wood. Today, methanol is mainly produced industrially by hydrogenation of carbon monoxide.
Natural gas is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Usually low levels of trace gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and helium are also present. Natural gas is colorless and odorless, so odorizers such as mercaptan, which smells like sulfur or rotten eggs, are commonly added to natural gas supplies for safety so that leaks can be readily detected.
Pipeline transport is the long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas through a system of pipes—a pipeline—typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than 2,175,000 miles (3,500,000 km) of pipeline in 120 countries of the world. The United States had 65%, Russia had 8%, and Canada had 3%, thus 76% of all pipeline were in these three countries.
Methane clathrate (CH4·5.75H2O) or (8CH4·46H2O), also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, fire ice, natural gas hydrate, or gas hydrate, is a solid clathrate compound (more specifically, a clathrate hydrate) in which a large amount of methane is trapped within a crystal structure of water, forming a solid similar to ice. Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System, where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth. Methane hydrate is formed when hydrogen-bonded water and methane gas come into contact at high pressures and low temperatures in oceans.
Clathrate hydrates, or gas hydrates, clathrates, hydrates, etc., are crystalline water-based solids physically resembling ice, in which small non-polar molecules or polar molecules with large hydrophobic moieties are trapped inside "cages" of hydrogen bonded, frozen water molecules. In other words, clathrate hydrates are clathrate compounds in which the host molecule is water and the guest molecule is typically a gas or liquid. Without the support of the trapped molecules, the lattice structure of hydrate clathrates would collapse into conventional ice crystal structure or liquid water. Most low molecular weight gases, including O2, H2, N2, CO2, CH4, H2S, Ar, Kr, and Xe, as well as some higher hydrocarbons and freons, will form hydrates at suitable temperatures and pressures. Clathrate hydrates are not officially chemical compounds, as the enclathrated guest molecules are never bonded to the lattice. The formation and decomposition of clathrate hydrates are first order phase transitions, not chemical reactions. Their detailed formation and decomposition mechanisms on a molecular level are still not well understood. Clathrate hydrates were first documented in 1810 by Sir Humphry Davy who found that water was a primary component of what was earlier thought to be solidified chlorine.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume of natural gas in the gaseous state (at standard conditions for temperature and pressure).
The methanol economy is a suggested future economy in which methanol and dimethyl ether replace fossil fuels as a means of energy storage, ground transportation fuel, and raw material for synthetic hydrocarbons and their products. It offers an alternative to the proposed hydrogen economy or ethanol economy, though these concepts are not exclusive.
Gas to liquids (GTL) is a refinery process to convert natural gas or other gaseous hydrocarbons into longer-chain hydrocarbons, such as gasoline or diesel fuel. Methane-rich gases are converted into liquid synthetic fuels. Two general strategies exist: (i) direct partial combustion of methane to methanol and (ii) Fischer–Tropsch-like processes that convert carbon monoxide and hydrogen into hydrocarbons. Strategy ii is followed by diverse methods to convert the hydrogen-carbon monoxide mixtures to liquids. Direct partial combustion has been demonstrated in nature but not replicated commercially. Technologies reliant on partial combustion have been commercialized mainly in regions where natural gas is inexpensive.
The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, also called the Mackenzie River Pipeline, was a proposed project to transport natural gas from the Beaufort Sea through Canada's Northwest Territories to tie into gas pipelines in northern Alberta. The project was first proposed in the early 1970s but was scrapped following an inquiry conducted by Justice Thomas Berger. The project was resurrected in 2004 with a new proposal to transport gas through the sensitive arctic tundra. Probabilistic estimates of hydrocarbons in the Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea regions project that there are natural gas reserves of 1.9 trillion cubic metres. After many delays, the project was officially abandoned in 2017 by the main investment partners citing natural gas prices and the long regulatory process.
The Dakota Gasification Company is a synthetic natural gas producing company founded in 1984 in Beulah, North Dakota, United States. It is an operator of the Great Plains Synfuels Plant. The plant is located at 47°21′27.75″N101°50′28.72″W. The plant uses lignite coal to produce synthetic natural gas utilizing a coal gasification process. The plant processes 16 thousand tons of coal daily. Coal is oxidized to coal gas, which is then converted from a mixture of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen to methane, by hydrogenation over a nickel catalyst. The synthetic natural gas is pipelined to the Northern Border Pipeline which transports gas from Canada, Montana and North Dakota to the Ventura, Iowa area, where the pipeline interconnects with many pipelines supplying the eastern United States. The Dakota Gasification Company is a subsidiary of the Basin Electric Power Cooperative which is located in Bismarck, North Dakota. On August 16, 2021, it was announced Bakken Energy would be acquiring the Dakota Gasification Company to be transformed to a blue hydrogen project.
The Alaska gas pipeline is a joint project of TransCanada Corp. and ExxonMobil Corp. to develop a natural gas pipeline under the AGIA, a.k.a. the Alaska Gas Inducement Act, adopted by Alaska Legislature in 2007. The project originally proposed two options during its open season offering over a three-month period from April 30 to July 30, 2010. An 'open season' in layman's terms is when a company conducts a non-binding show of interest or poll in the marketplace, they ask potential customers "if we build it, will you come?".
The oil and gas industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream and downstream. The midstream sector involves the transportation, storage, and wholesale marketing of crude or refined petroleum products. Pipelines and other transport systems can be used to move crude oil from production sites to refineries and deliver the various refined products to downstream distributors. Natural gas pipeline networks aggregate gas from natural gas purification plants and deliver it to downstream customers, such as local utilities.
Natural-gas processing is a range of industrial processes designed to purify raw natural gas by removing impurities, contaminants and higher molecular mass hydrocarbons to produce what is known as pipeline quality dry natural gas. Natural gas has to be processed in order to prepare it for final use and ensure that elimination of contaminants.
An LNG carrier is a tank ship designed for transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Sirte Oil Company (SOC) is an oil and gas company in Libya operating under the state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC). The company is located in Brega SOC’s operations include oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) and manufacturing.
Methane ( MEH-thayn, MEE-thayn) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula CH4 (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Earth makes it an economically attractive fuel, although capturing and storing it poses technical challenges due to its gaseous state under normal conditions for temperature and pressure.
Associated petroleum gas (APG), or associated gas, is a form of natural gas which is found with deposits of petroleum, either dissolved in the oil or as a free "gas cap" above the oil in the reservoir. The gas can be utilized in a number of ways after processing: sold and included in the natural-gas distribution networks, used for on-site electricity generation with engines or turbines, reinjected for secondary recovery and used in enhanced oil recovery, converted from gas to liquids producing synthetic fuels, or used as feedstock for the petrochemical industry, but much of it worldwide is flared.
Natural gas was the United States' largest source of energy production in 2016, representing 33 percent of all energy produced in the country. Natural gas has been the largest source of electrical generation in the United States since July 2015.
Methane functionalization is the process of converting methane in its gaseous state to another molecule with a functional group, typically methanol or acetic acid, through the use of transition metal catalysts.