Adventures in Energy

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Introduction

Although natural gas and crude oil often can be found in the same location, they take completely different routes from the wellhead to you, the consumer. While crude oil and refined products can travel through a chain of pipelines, tanker ships, trucks and the like, 99 percent of natural gas makes the journey entirely through pipelines made of durable carbon steel. This makes it important to bring recovered natural gas into line with market specifications before it enters the main interstate pipeline system.

The natural gas used to cook our food and/or heat and cool our homes is 90 percent clean-burning methane, the simplest form of hydrocarbon. But that's not the case for natural gas as it comes out of the ground. Depending on the location of the well and the geologic conditions that created the gas in the first place, contaminants such as water, sulfur and natural gas liquids (including ethane, propane and butane) may be present. So-called “gathering pipelines” collect natural gas from wells in a given region and deliver it to local processing plants. The processed gas then enters the interstate pipeline distribution system.

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Special thanks to the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) and the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) for helpful technical advice and assistance with this segment.