Kevin Colby: News, culture, political blog

Clean-burning natural gas

Natural gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. On average, it emits half the CO2 and significantly less local pollution for each unit of electricity produced than modern coal-burning power plants. Shell produces around 3% of the world’s natural gas. Roughly 40% of our total production is gas – either as pipeline gas or liquefied natural gas (LNG). Investing in gas production is an important part of their strategy.  Their new natural gas developments are in increasingly tough geological conditions – like the gas field in Pinedale, USA, where a thousand tightly-spaced wells must be drilled to reach the gas trapped in tiny pores of rock, or the Changbei tight gas project in China. Their natural gas projects are also increasingly in frontier locations. In December 2007, they took operational control of the newly-opened Ormen Lange gas field, lying nearly 3,000 metres beneath a rugged seabed in water depths of up to 1,100 metres off the Norwegian coast. The project boasts the world’s longest underwater pipeline and will eventually provide enough gas to meet 20% of the UK’s needs.

LNG leader

Cooling natural gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG) shrinks it to 1/600th of its original size, so it can be transported long distances by ship. As a result, customers get a wider choice of natural gas suppliers. They’re a global leader in LNG, holding the largest share of LNG capacity of any international oil company. And by 2010 they aim to have almost doubled our capacity since 2004. In 2007, their joint venture in Nigeria expanded its capacity. Their North West Shelf venture in Australia is also expanding and the construction of Russia’s first LNG plant on Sakhalin Island is nearing completion. Together, these additions will add almost 10% to the world’s current LNG capacity. Work is also well under way on the Qatargas 4 LNG facility in Qatar. When complete, it will deliver enough natural gas annually to supply around 20 million homes.

Coal gasification

Shell scientists have also developed proprietary coal gasification technology that makes capturing the CO2 from coal-fired power plants cheaper and less energy intensive. The Shell process also lowers air pollution and water use. The technology turns virtually any coal – even the dirtiest grades – into a clean-burning synthetic gas, which can be used as fuel for power generation. It also creates a concentrated, high-pressure stream of CO2 that is well suited for capture and underground storage. As a result, combining CO2 storage with coal gasification is nearly 30% more energy efficient than doing the same with the most modern (supercritical) type of coal-fired plant. That means significantly lower CO2 emissions. To date, 21 plants using Shell’s gasification technology have been (or are being) built, mainly in China but also in the Netherlands, the UK, the USA and Vietnam – to make fertilizer, feedstock for chemicals or fuel for power generation.

Visit Shell.com and learn more.

For more information on natural gas click here.