The Logistics of Natural Gas
The Logistics of Natural Gas
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0:00An American household is typically delivered
two physical goods as utilities. The first
0:06is water—and the ability to turn on a tap and
reliably have fresh, clean water year round,
0:11no matter recent precipitation is undoubtedly
impressive, but a water utility is typically
0:16a fairly local service. Except in a few,
fascinating exceptions, water tends to be
0:21gathered from a natural source, processed,
and delivered to households fairly nearby.
0:26It’s a fairly intuitive, fairly straightforward
process that has been going on, in some form,
0:31for hundreds, even thousands of years.
Natural gas, though—that’s a modern marvel.
0:38The general rule, across the world, is that
natural gas production happens where people
0:42are not. This is in part a happenstance of
geography, in part the consequence of an
0:47aversion to proximity to production, but what it
means is that gas often has to travel hundreds,
0:52if not thousands of miles to get to its end-user.
To get low-density, flammable gas across an entire
0:59continent is far from easy, and it’s even harder
to do so profitably. Whereas gasoline and other
1:05liquid fuels are dense enough that the cost of
transport to the end-user by truck is marginal
1:10relative to the overall cost, the same is not
true for natural gas. Therefore, through time,
1:16what has turned the previously worthless gas into
a profitable commodity was figuring out how to
1:21make the transport economics work. And the answer
for that was pipelines—really, really long ones.
1:29Taking the example of an end-user in
Basalt, Colorado, their town’s local
1:33network hooks up to a larger transmission
pipeline that follows the area’s highway
1:37down the valley until around here—under
this golf course, this dead-end offshoot
1:42connects with the long-distance transmission
pipelines spanning across Colorado. Now,
1:47the fact that this happens under a golf course
demonstrates something important—the pipeline
1:51operator does not own the land through which the
pipeline passes. Rather, they own the right for
1:57the pipeline to pass through others’ land—they
own an easement. When a pipeline is constructed,
2:02the company negotiates with landowners to purchase
the easement or, if negotiations don’t go well,
2:07acquires it through eminent domain. In exchange,
the landowner gets paid a lump sum, more of
2:13less equivalent to the reduction in property
value caused by the new easement. After all,
2:18the property value will be lower. Not only will
buyers be wary of living near a pipeline due to
2:23the low but non-zero risk of an accident, but
easements also come with restrictions on what
2:28one can do with the land. Typically, you can’t
build any buildings, you can’t plant any trees,
2:33you really can only have pavement, grass, or
dirt. The operator needs to be able to access
2:38the pipeline for maintenance and repair at any
time so they can’t have a permanent structure in
2:43the way. And these easements are legally-binding
for eternity—they are baked in with a property’s
2:48title, so buyers must still abide by the
restrictions agreed upon by the original seller.
2:53Here, the adjacent housing development is laid
out in a way to avoid the largely-invisible
2:58right-of-way, then on the other side of the
river the right-of-way slides between buildings,
3:02barely even visible from a satellite view. But
as the hills start, the right-of-way takes its
3:07more typical form—a 50-foot wide stretch
of land devoid of trees. And that lack of
3:12trees originates, of course, from construction.
That process is fairly straightforward. First,
3:18heavy machinery is used to dig a trench. Then,
sections of pipe are laid out next to the trench,
3:24and a pipe-bending machine comes through to
bend the pipe to follow the topography. Next,
3:29these shorter sections are welded together into
longer sections, and the welds are strictly
3:33inspected—after all, structural integrity is
critically necessary to prevent an incident.
3:39Once complete, they’ll place these long sections
in the trench on sandbags to prevent damage to
3:43their protective coating, then soft, rock-free
dirt is placed to directly surround the pipe,
3:48followed by the previously-removed dirt to
fill the rest of the trench. From there,
3:52the crews test the pipe by filling it with
water and pressurizing it well beyond its normal
3:56operating pressure, and that’s about it. Pipeline
construction is relatively straightforward and
4:02moves relatively fast—under the right conditions,
crews can install upward of a mile of pipe a day,
4:08often across quite remote environments.
But there is more to pipeline construction than
4:14just constructing the pipe—after all, if you put
natural gas into a pipeline in Texas, it doesn’t
4:20just magically flow to Colorado. That’s why
you need this—a compressor station. As the name
4:26implies, these are the facilities that compress
the gas, and it’s this pressure that propels the
4:31gas forward through the pipeline at a speed of
about 25 miles or 40 kilometers per hour. But
4:37they’re also important for making the economics
work. An average household uses about 200 cubic
4:42feet of natural gas a day. That’s a lot of volume
of gas—it’d fill up a 6-foot, or 2-meter cube,
4:50or the volume of about ten fridges. The economics
of transporting this gas would never work if it
4:56were done at its natural density. That’s why they
compress it—quite a lot, in fact, to between 500
5:01and 1400 pounds per square inch, allowing a
pipeline to be used far more efficiently.
5:07These compressor stations are also often
home to so-called “pig launchers,” which
5:11are more humane than they sound. That’s because
these are what are referred to as pigs—devices
5:17placed into the pipeline to perform some
function. Some pigs clean the pipeline,
5:22whereas others are smart pigs fitted with sensors
to inspect it for any vulnerabilities. While less
5:27relevant in natural gas pipelines, operators
will even use pigs to separate out two different
5:32products moving through a pipeline—they might send
a batch of traditional vehicle fuel, then a pig,
5:37then a batch of jet fuel, for example. And
wherever there’s a pig launcher there’s also a pig
5:42catcher that’s able to remove the device from the
pipeline while still allowing product to flow.
5:47Now, this pipeline eventually emerges from the
mountains into another golf course, this time
5:51just south of the town of Eagle. From there it
connects to another pipeline—right continues east,
5:57but left eventually dead-ends just a few
miles down the road. This is common, because
6:02while one major category of customers for these
long-distance transmission pipelines is the local
6:07utilities that distribute gas to local users,
the other big customers are large industrial
6:12facilities that use so much natural gas that they
have a direct connection to the long-distance
6:18pipelines. In this case, it’s a plant that turns
gypsum mined nearby into plaster drywall, and it's
6:23energy-intensive enough that the facility operates
its own 6 megawatt natural gas power plant.
6:29The rest of the pipeline, though, more or less
follows the path of route 6, then diverts south
6:33over a set of hills before reconnecting with the
highway and ending up here—another compressor
6:38station. Although, this compressor station isn’t
operated by Black Hills Energy like the pipeline
6:43up until this point—it’s operated by Xcel Energy.
That’s because here, the pipeline’s ownership
6:49changes, which is also abundantly common.
Pipelines in the US are highly regulated by
6:56the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and, as
part of that, interstate pipeline operators are
7:01required to provide non-discriminatory open-access
to all qualified shippers. Effectively, they’re
7:07not even allowed to provide preference to their
own product. FERC also regulates rates—Black Hills
7:13Energy, for example, is allowed to charge $36.87
to reserve a dekatherm of pipeline capacity during
7:19the winter, when demand is higher. That guarantees
capacity, then they’ll charge another 10 cents
7:25per dekatherm for the actual transmission.
Alternately, shippers can pay just 94 cents
7:30per dekatherm, with no capacity charge, for
“interruptible transportation,” where product
7:34is shipped only if there is available capacity.
The fact that this system is open access is
7:39ultimately how product can find its way through
the nation’s web of pipelines all the way from
7:43where it’s produced. A shipper might pay a dozen
different companies for their transmission service
7:48to get the gas from its origin. And in
the case of an end-user in Colorado,
7:52it’s quite likely that the origin for
its gas is here—Texas’ Permian Basin.
7:59There, the natural gas is extracted from the
ground and processed into its commodity form.
8:03The area’s primary industry is the more
lucrative oil production, but natural gas
8:08is often a byproduct of that. Still to this day,
many rigs burn off natural gas if they lack the
8:13infrastructure to divert it for sale, but an
increasing number do capture both. But whether
8:19extracted via combined or dedicated rigs, it is
often difficult to fluctuate production quickly
8:24to match demand. And demand fluctuates wildly
considering so much of the use of the gas is for
8:30heating. So that’s the role of these 400 different
natural gas storage sites dotted across America.
8:36Some of these sites are just the very areas
where gas was previously extracted from—depleted
8:41underground caverns. Once all of that original
gas is gathered, the giant Swiss-cheese holes
8:46in the ground—sometimes spanning thousands of
acres—sit empty and that makes them ideal for
8:51storage. They also already have existing wells,
existing extraction and injection methods,
8:56and existing pipeline connections. Here, gas is
reinjected into the impermeable natural caverns
9:01some 1,000 to 5,000 feet, or 300 to 1,500
meters below the ground, where the working
9:07gas—the natural gas that is commodified—occupies
the upper part of the cavern and a cushion gas
9:12maintains a pressure buffer at the bottom. Because
the depleted natural gas fields are established,
9:17proven, and widespread, their geology and
infrastructure generally makes them the most
9:21inexpensive and easiest way to store natural gas.
There is, however, another method that crept into
9:27more use about a decade ago as the country
ramped up some storage capacity: Salt caverns,
9:32which can quickly turn over storage since
they can accept a higher ratio of working
9:37gas to cushion gas. Leaching out and creating salt
caverns is expensive, but because of their high
9:42withdrawal and injection rate—which can cycle up
to 12 times per year—that cost can be justified.
9:48This short withdrawal cycle is ideal for pumping
energy into power plants during peak periods,
9:52and because more natural salt caverns are
found in the South and Gulf area, this is
9:57where they’re increasingly being put to use.
The third type, similar to depleted oil fields
10:02in structure, are drained aquifers. These share
the characteristics of being underground natural
10:06storage areas, but because they were previously
stored water the surfaces can be permeable and
10:11the caverns less explored. It’s more expensive
to transform aquifers into natural gas storage
10:16so it’s primarily done in areas, like the
Midwest, where depleted oil fields are less
10:20common. Furthermore, aquifers require up to
80 percent cushion gas, meaning the amount
10:25of working gas they actually hold is far
less than something like a salt cavern,
10:29making injection and withdrawal more difficult.
But not all the gas extracted in Texas,
10:35or anywhere in the US for that matter, will even
be used in the US. Increasingly, gas is not only
10:41transported across a continent, but across the
world. And to get to such far-flung markets,
10:47it’s moved as a liquid, crossing oceans,
gulfs, seas, and straits in one of these.
10:53This is a Q-Max class liquefied natural gas
carrier. There are 14 of them worldwide, and their
10:58classification signals that they are the very
largest vessel capable of docking at Qatar’s LNG
11:04terminals, making them the largest LNG carriers in
the world. But in terms of sheer capacity, these
11:10are small in comparison to their conventional
oil tanker contemporaries. A Q-Max can carry
11:15some 266,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas
whereas the world’s largest TI-class supertankers
11:22can carry up to 450,000 cubic meters of oil. And
yet these conventional oil tankers, with their
11:28superior storage, come at a fraction of the cost
of a LNG carrier, as the last TI-class supertanker
11:34cost $82 million in 2003, while a Q-Max runs in
the $200 to $300 million range. While smaller,
11:43more expensive to build, and more expensive to
maintain given the requirement of keeping natural
11:47gas in a fluid state, experts believe there
will soon be more LNG tankers plodding across
11:52the oceans than oil tankers. The reason as to why
has to do with some geography and some physics.
11:59On a global scale, the demand for natural gas
is in places far from the supply. In 2023, these
12:05three countries were the largest LNG importers in
the world, with China narrowly outpacing Japan.
12:11For decades, these three countries have been
at the top of the list, with Japan the world’s
12:15number one year in year out until 2021. And for
two of these three countries, total consumption
12:22exactly matches or very nearly matches imports.
Put simply: Japan has very limited natural gas,
12:29and South Korea has almost none. And while
China does have a strong domestic supply,
12:34it cannot nearly keep pace with its own demand.
The difficulty is, most of the big suppliers are
12:40far away and across oceans that make any sort
of pipeline project infeasible. So geography
12:46has dictated if natural gas is to get from the
US or Qatar or Russia or Norway or Australia,
12:52it’s likely going to be by ship.
But it’s physics that makes natural
12:56gas cost competitive. For natural gas to enter
a liquid state, it needs to be cooled to and
13:01kept at -260° Fahrenheit or -162° Celsius—which
is what makes LNG ships so expensive to build
13:10and expensive to run. But it’s worth the trade
off because once cooled into a liquid, natural
13:15gas shrinks to 1/600th of its previous volume.
While natural gas has been lobbied as a cleaner,
13:21more efficient energy source by proponents,
it’s really this incredible transformation
13:25from voluminous gas to energy dense liquid that
makes this energy source so remarkable, and now,
13:31so important on a global scale. By keeping the
gas at -260 Fahrenheit, the common adage goes,
13:37a beach ball’s worth of gas shrinks down to the
size of a ping pong ball. But that example lacks
13:42scale. Phrased in another way, that a single
ship’s worth of LNG becomes 600 ship’s worth
13:48of gas in its natural state, it becomes easier
to understand why LNG has skyrocketed in trade
13:53volume decade after decade—even if it’s
incredibly expensive and labor intensive
13:59to keep the stuff at such a cold temperature.
Before liquid natural gas can be loaded onto
14:04an expensive boat, it needs to be cooled down
at an expensive liquefaction facility. At each
14:09liquefaction facility there are what the industry
calls trains—where the gas is treated to remove
14:14impurities, then progressively cooled to turn
raw gas into clean gas then clean gas into liquid
14:19gas. At Sabine Pass in coastal Louisiana, the
oldest operational liquefaction terminal in the
14:25US—as well as the largest—there are currently six
separate functional trains. The first five cost,
14:31as estimated by Cheniere Energy which owns and
operates the facility, between $17.5 and $18.5
14:37billion dollars to build, while the sixth added
later cost of about $2.5 billion. After trains,
14:43the product is then stored, awaiting a ship.
At Sabine Pass, LNG is stored in five separate
14:49tanks capable of holding an absurd 500 million
cubic meters worth of gas. Once a ship has been
14:55positioned in a vessel berth—of which Sabine
Pass has three—and once the ship’s tanks have
14:59been cleaned and prepared to take on the freezing
liquid, loading arms are then bolted onto the
15:03ship and the filling process begins while crews
monitor ice build up on the adjoining pipes. If
15:08the ship’s tanks have already been cooled, filling
will take up to about 15 hours. This process needs
15:13to be fairly quick, as Chenaire reported that it
filled 423 cargoes in 2022, and 425 in 2023.
15:21Once the liquid natural gas is on the move, it’s
now the job of tanker operators to monitor its
15:25freezing cargo and minimize loss on account of
off-boiling. There are two main categories of
15:30LNG tankers—those with independent tanks, like the
recognizable Moss-style with its spherical tanks,
15:35and those with the less distinguishable integral
tank—where the tank functions as a part of the
15:40hull. The former is older, deals with less
sloshing—a danger that can damage tanks or
15:45increase boil-off inside the tank—and is reliably
safe on account of the tank’s isolation from the
15:49hull. The latter is capable of carrying far more
and because of this are becoming more prevalent,
15:54and are reliably safe on account of the tank’s
pliability should the hull be struck. But both
15:59rely less on continuously cooling their product
than just keeping it cold in the first place,
16:03as both tank structures are maximally insulated
with more than 20 centimeters of foam and multiple
16:08barriers surrounding the tanks. Still, some
boil-off is bound to occur, but rather smartly,
16:14that’s what powers the boat. And should the tank
experience too much boil-off, there are systems
16:19in place to slow the process, whether by running
gas back through reliquification, or by cooling
16:24the tank by spraying liquid from the bottom of
the tank in the gap at the top. Keeping an eye on
16:29all this is a crew of about 20-29 members,
with at least one cargo engineer focused on the
16:34composition of gas within the tanks specifically.
Upon reaching its port of call, the process is
16:38effectively reversed, in a similarly labor
and infrastructure intensive process with
16:43regasification equipment in place of trains.
Ultimately, for as dispersed as users of natural
16:49gas are, and diverse as the uses of natural
gas are, the process of making, moving, and
16:53regassing LNG is remarkably confined. Across the
world’s two largest LNG producers, LNG exporting
17:00is confined to only seven active locations—6 in
the US and just one in Qatar. And as for imports,
17:07Japan with the longest history of LNG reliance
is home to around just 30 regasification plants.
17:14But like all fossil fuels, demand for natural
gas is expected to soon peak. New buildings are
17:19increasingly being built with heat pumps, electric
water heaters, induction stovetops, and other
17:24cleaner, more efficient electric alternatives.
In fact, already, in New York City, for example,
17:29certain new buildings are banned from adding
natural gas hookups. So this incredible network
17:34of pipelines and tankers will grow increasingly
irrelevant in the coming decades. For now, though,
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