What's Flowing Through the Pipelines?
A Primer on Natural Gas
A great many people in different countries around the world heat their homes with natural gas. With that fact noted, the vast majority of people -- natural gas consumers and others alike -- know very little about natural gas, lack basic information about this energy source.
In point of fact, "natural gas" is something of a misnomer. In the ground, what most people refer to as "natural gas" is actually a combination of a number of different gases, including:
- methane
- ethane
- propane
- butane
- pentane
- hexane
- heptanes
In most instances, utility companies extract almost everything from the natural gas extracted from the ground save for methane. The gas provided by public utilities that heats most homes primarily is methane gas.
The chemical formula for methane is one carbon atom paired with four hydrogen atoms. Because of its chemical combination, methane is a clean burning fuel. When it is burned, the byproducts are carbon dioxide and water vapor.
In the United States, a vast majority of recent construction relies upon natural gas (methane) for heating. A full 70 percent of all homes constructed in the 21st century in the U.S.A. utilizes natural gas (methane) for heating purposes.
Natural gas can be found in approximately 50 different countries. Approximately 2,464 billion cubic meters of natural gas is extracted from the ground and processed for consumer usage each and every year worldwide.
The United States produces nearly 23 percent of the natural gas extracted annually. All of the countries that comprised the former Soviet Union produce nearly 28 percent of the world's natural gas. Other leading international producers of natural gas are: Canada, Mexico, and the European Union nations.
In the United States, natural gas can be found in 33 states. There are four states in which a very significant amount of natural gas is extracted: Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.
The United States is the largest consumer of natural gas in the world today. More than 25 percent of the natural gas used in the world today is utilized and consumed in the United States. This compares with 23 percent which is consumed by all of the countries that comprised the former Soviet Union. The countries of the European Union consume approximately 20 percent of the natural gas produced each year. Continently, the lowest usage of natural gas is found in all of the countries in Africa. All African countries combined consume a meager 2 percent of the natural gas produced each year.
An increasing number of power plants have turned to utilizing natural gas to produce electrical power in the past decade. While the majority of power plants are fueled by coal or nuclear energy, 95 percent of the new power sources for electrical plants added in the United States since the turn of the century has been natural gas. These plants are electing to use natural gas because it is a clean burning and efficient source of power.