Agreed about the natural gas thing.
As one pundit explained it, natural gas is basically as cheap and as available as water. But it takes up a tremendous amount of volume so it is expensive to transport and store.
Hence oil fields consider natural gas “excess product” they burn off.
Much like water, in many places you could pick up a truck load of natural gas “for free,” but the cost of the truck, the driver etc, means you would lose money selling it.
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btw you can also burn vegetable oil in a heating oil furnace, and yes you can run a diesel engine off it but
1.) Vegetable oil costs more than diesel
2.) It burns hotter so, you’d have to replace a few parts before they burn out.
More and more of the gas associated with wells and fracs is being captured for sale… It is also becoming a major component of the energy transported to drilling and FRAC sites to operate the equipment on site. Catapillar and Cummings manufacture dual fuel engines to blend natural gas with diesel fuel. It takes about 1.63 gallons of LNG to produce the energy of one gallon of diesel fuel. A diesel gallon equivalent (DGE) of Natural gas currently costs about $2.40 vs $3.98 for a gallon of dyed diesel. Considering that a rig burns about 3,000 gallons of diesel a day and a FRAC will burn about 30,000 gallons a day, you do the math.
We had a 300 gallon drum, on its side on a stand, when we heated with fuel oil. That was about 30 years ago. Had it delivered every month during the winter. Same with LPG.
That is a CNG system. The gas is stored in a compressed state, but still as a gas. For long-range applications, LNG, instead of CNG is used. LNG is a cryo system, with the methane gas stored in liquid form. An LNG Transport can transfer 10,700 gallons of LNG. There are currently 12,000 gallon trailer mounted Queen units, with built-in compressor/manifold systems for vaporizing and dispensing the LNG either into other tanks, at pressure, or directly into fixed equipment burning natural gas mixtures. Your standard fuel tanker will load circa 7500 gallons of diesel/gasoline in compartments within the trailer. The standard load of an LNG Transport equals the energy found in over 8000 gallons of diesel fuel. And a DGE of LNG costs about $2.60. What is the current price of gasoline and diesel right now?
They came and topped it off, I think it was monthly. I was 15 when we got it and moved away from the buck stove. They could have come by and filled the damn thing up everyday, I wouldn’t have cared, was just glad to not be chopping wood anymore.
DGE dollar gallon equivalent?
That must not be an at-the-pump price.
If it were, it would already be the norm and offered on every corner.
LNG Basics
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state, at about -260° Fahrenheit, for shipping and storage. The volume of natural gas in its liquid state is about 600 times smaller than its volume in its gaseous state. This process makes it possible to transport natural gas to places pipelines do not reach.
Liquefying natural gas is a way to move natural gas long distances when pipeline transport is not feasible.
Apparently NG needs to be cooled to -260° Fahrenheit to be liquified, that does not sound economically feasible for
in pipelines
in cars for use
maybe not in trucks for transport
Seems like (so far) were are stuck with CNG and would need ultera-large trucks, ultra-large gas tanks in cars, ultra-large pipelines etc…
I’m just guessing here, but that is probably why we don’t use it already.
Anyway I am not arguing against it. I like nat gas. I am just trying to figure out why we are not using it already.
Once it reaches it’s liquid state, it’s all a matter of maintaining pressure from there. The pipelines and vehicles do not need to provide refrigeration to the tanks.
DGE stands for Diesel Gallon Equivalent. It represents the amount of natural gas required to provide the BTU energy equivalent of one gallon of diesel. One DGE of raw gas wholesales for about $0.30 at today’s spot price. It takes about $0,62 to liquify that raw gas for transport. The mark-up to customers varies, depending on freight and volume. I see anywhere from $1.90 - 2.70 per DGE.
