Natural Gas Engineering
Advanced Natural Gas Engineering
Course Summary
History of Natural Gas
The first use of natural gas was probably some 2400 years ago by the Chinese, who used natural gas piped through the bamboo to evaporate water from brine for salt production
Manufactured or Town gas was developed in the late 17 th early 18 th century for local residential and commercial lighting, again using wooden pipes This was not natural gas but manufactured methane from carbon
In 1821 in Fredonia, New York, William A Hart drilled a 27 foot deep well in an effort to get a larger flow of gas from a surface seepage of natural gas This was the first well intentionally drilled to obtain natural gas
In the early years of oil production, the associated natural gas was first released then flared and only locally used, so much of the early gas was wasted
After WWII the natural gas industry took off with the ability to manufacture iron pipe
The following slides review the overview of the natural gas industry!
Natural Gas Resources
Conventional gas
Associated gas found with oil
Non associated gas found alongside minimal oil, dry gas, gas well gas
Approximately 93% of the gas produced in the US is non-associated gas
Tight Sand Gas
Found in low permeability sandstone formations
Porosity ( f ) is still on the order of 0.20 0.30
Permeability (K) 0.001 < K < 1 mD millidarcy
Shale Gas/Gas rich Shale/Tight Shale
Found in low permeability shales
Porosity ( f ) may be as great as 0.12
Permeability (K) is typically less than 1 mD
Coalbed Methane
Found in coal beds
Less than 3,000 ft deep
Gas Hydrates
Discovered in 1810, snow-like solids
Water molecules bond together in a form of the crystalline lattice
Inside which methane molecules are trapped
Contain 170x the natural gas by volume (STP)