Natural Gas: An Introduction

Natural gas occurs underground when petroleum (crude oil) matures further under high pressure and intense heat. Just like petroleum (crude oil), which is buried under millions of years of sediment, natural gas needs to be extracted from the earth through drilling.

When petroleum (crude oil) matures further under high pressure and temperature deep underground, the carbon atoms no longer bond to each other. Each carbon atom is surrounded only by hydrogen atoms. This makes natural gas, or methane. The gas rises to the top of reservoirs, gets trapped by the cap rock, and often sits on top of the liquid petroleum (crude oil) beneath it.

Drilling is used to find trapped gas underground. Then, a well is built. The gas naturally flows up to surface level.

From the well, the natural gas is transferred into pipelines which transport the gas to a processing plant.

A processing plant may be connected to over a 100 wells in the area through a complex system of interconnecting pipelines.

DID YOU KNOW? Natural gas is difficult to transport across oceans and does not sell at as high a price as petroleum (crude oil). For this reason, for many years, it was simply burned off from the tops of petroleum (crude oil) reservoirs so that oil companies could get to the more valuable petroleum (crude oil) beneath.