REPOST: Liquefied natural gas safe and fun, advocates say

What is LNG or liquefied natural gas? To give you an insight, read this article from Forbes.com.

Image Source: forbes.com

The term “liquefied natural gas” may bring to mind images of sprawling terminals and processing facilities pumping volatile hydrocarbons through pipes and gleaming metallic tackle. You may see visions of giant tankers Asia-bound with ice crystals running down the sides, liquefied cargo sloshing around just waiting to blow.

In reality, LNG is much less volatile or explosive than many other hydrocarbon products, as I learned from ConocoPhillips COP +0.93%’ Peter Micciche at the LNG 17 exhibition last week in Houston. It does not need to be pressurized to remain liquid, and its high ignition point – higher than gasoline or diesel – as well as its lightness and lack of oily residue mean that it can be processed, dispensed and transported more safely than many other products. Micciche’s demo, which can be found on YouTube, is choc-full of gimmicks designed to calm the public’s fear of natural gas catastrophes, at least on the liquefaction and transportation side.

Micciche, a friendly guy with a salt-and-pepper beard who is the manager of ConocoPhillips’ Kenai LNG Facility in Alaska, showed the crowd the LNG in a canister, basically an oversized metal Thermos. In order to become liquid, natural gas needs to be cooled to about minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit in a processing facility, and at that point it can be carried around in an insulated container. No pressurizing is required to keep it liquid; it simply evaporates little by little as the liquid warms up. If the LNG is kept in a container that releases pressure, it won’t explode.

At the Houston exhibition, Micciche brazenly poured the stuff on the floor, where it made a “pitt-patt” sound and disappeared in a puff. He poured it into an occupied goldfish bowl, where it swirled and steamed on the surface until all that was left was a crust of frozen ice on the top while the fish swam around inside. He also poured it into a beaker and lit it – it burned evenly with a yellow flame much like the one from a burner on a stovetop. He seemed to truly enjoy playing with the super-cooled substance and brought spectators into his land of fun.

North American oil and gas companies are banking on LNG becoming more widely adopted as an industrial fuel, a transportation fuel, and an export. The LNG space could see significant M&A over the next year or two as gas producers sell stakes in projects, or sell themselves entirely, and end-users look to secure supply, as Mergermarket has reported. Chevron recently acquired a 50% stake in the Canadian export terminal Kitimat for about $1.3 billion, and in February 2012, private equity firm Blackstone Group agreed to put $2 billion into Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass export terminal.

To be fair, much of the political opposition to LNG, both as an export and a domestic product, has to do with the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing and the potential price increases for current users of natural gas (which includes any customer of an electric utility that generates power from natural gas power plants). Those are different discussions and different equations. But anyone wondering about the safety of the stuff itself can rest easy that we won’t be seeing natural gas-caked seagulls washing up on any beaches, and we can put it in cars as long as the gas tank isn’t airtight.

The Natural Gas Engineering Handbook, which was co-authored by Dr. Ali Ghalambor, can provide you with more information on petroleum production. You can also visit this Facebook page for more updates.