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The Logistics of Natural Gas
The Logistics of Natural Gas
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0:00
An American household is typically delivered two physical goods as utilities. The first
0:06
is water—and the ability to turn on a tap and reliably have fresh, clean water year round,
0:11
no matter recent precipitation is undoubtedly impressive, but a water utility is typically
0:16
a fairly local service. Except in a few, fascinating exceptions, water tends to be
0:21
gathered from a natural source, processed, and delivered to households fairly nearby.
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It’s a fairly intuitive, fairly straightforward process that has been going on, in some form,
0:31
for hundreds, even thousands of years. Natural gas, though—that’s a modern marvel.
0:38
The general rule, across the world, is that natural gas production happens where people
0:42
are not. This is in part a happenstance of geography, in part the consequence of an
0:47
aversion to proximity to production, but what it means is that gas often has to travel hundreds,
0:52
if not thousands of miles to get to its end-user. To get low-density, flammable gas across an entire
0:59
continent is far from easy, and it’s even harder to do so profitably. Whereas gasoline and other
1:05
liquid fuels are dense enough that the cost of transport to the end-user by truck is marginal
1:10
relative to the overall cost, the same is not true for natural gas. Therefore, through time,
1:16
what has turned the previously worthless gas into a profitable commodity was figuring out how to
1:21
make the transport economics work. And the answer for that was pipelines—really, really long ones.
1:29
Taking the example of an end-user in Basalt, Colorado, their town’s local
1:33
network hooks up to a larger transmission pipeline that follows the area’s highway
1:37
down the valley until around here—under this golf course, this dead-end offshoot
1:42
connects with the long-distance transmission pipelines spanning across Colorado. Now,
1:47
the fact that this happens under a golf course demonstrates something important—the pipeline
1:51
operator does not own the land through which the pipeline passes. Rather, they own the right for
1:57
the pipeline to pass through others’ land—they own an easement. When a pipeline is constructed,
2:02
the company negotiates with landowners to purchase the easement or, if negotiations don’t go well,
2:07
acquires it through eminent domain. In exchange, the landowner gets paid a lump sum, more of
2:13
less equivalent to the reduction in property value caused by the new easement. After all,
2:18
the property value will be lower. Not only will buyers be wary of living near a pipeline due to
2:23
the low but non-zero risk of an accident, but easements also come with restrictions on what
2:28
one can do with the land. Typically, you can’t build any buildings, you can’t plant any trees,
2:33
you really can only have pavement, grass, or dirt. The operator needs to be able to access
2:38
the pipeline for maintenance and repair at any time so they can’t have a permanent structure in
2:43
the way. And these easements are legally-binding for eternity—they are baked in with a property’s
2:48
title, so buyers must still abide by the restrictions agreed upon by the original seller.
2:53
Here, the adjacent housing development is laid out in a way to avoid the largely-invisible
2:58
right-of-way, then on the other side of the river the right-of-way slides between buildings,
3:02
barely even visible from a satellite view. But as the hills start, the right-of-way takes its
3:07
more typical form—a 50-foot wide stretch of land devoid of trees. And that lack of
3:12
trees originates, of course, from construction. That process is fairly straightforward. First,
3:18
heavy machinery is used to dig a trench. Then, sections of pipe are laid out next to the trench,
3:24
and a pipe-bending machine comes through to bend the pipe to follow the topography. Next,
3:29
these shorter sections are welded together into longer sections, and the welds are strictly
3:33
inspected—after all, structural integrity is critically necessary to prevent an incident.
3:39
Once complete, they’ll place these long sections in the trench on sandbags to prevent damage to
3:43
their protective coating, then soft, rock-free dirt is placed to directly surround the pipe,
3:48
followed by the previously-removed dirt to fill the rest of the trench. From there,
3:52
the crews test the pipe by filling it with water and pressurizing it well beyond its normal
3:56
operating pressure, and that’s about it. Pipeline construction is relatively straightforward and
4:02
moves relatively fast—under the right conditions, crews can install upward of a mile of pipe a day,
4:08
often across quite remote environments. But there is more to pipeline construction than
4:14
just constructing the pipe—after all, if you put natural gas into a pipeline in Texas, it doesn’t
4:20
just magically flow to Colorado. That’s why you need this—a compressor station. As the name
4:26
implies, these are the facilities that compress the gas, and it’s this pressure that propels the
4:31
gas forward through the pipeline at a speed of about 25 miles or 40 kilometers per hour. But
4:37
they’re also important for making the economics work. An average household uses about 200 cubic
4:42
feet of natural gas a day. That’s a lot of volume of gas—it’d fill up a 6-foot, or 2-meter cube,
4:50
or the volume of about ten fridges. The economics of transporting this gas would never work if it
4:56
were done at its natural density. That’s why they compress it—quite a lot, in fact, to between 500
5:01
and 1400 pounds per square inch, allowing a pipeline to be used far more efficiently.
5:07
These compressor stations are also often home to so-called “pig launchers,” which
5:11
are more humane than they sound. That’s because these are what are referred to as pigs—devices
5:17
placed into the pipeline to perform some function. Some pigs clean the pipeline,
5:22
whereas others are smart pigs fitted with sensors to inspect it for any vulnerabilities. While less
5:27
relevant in natural gas pipelines, operators will even use pigs to separate out two different
5:32
products moving through a pipeline—they might send a batch of traditional vehicle fuel, then a pig,
5:37
then a batch of jet fuel, for example. And wherever there’s a pig launcher there’s also a pig
5:42
catcher that’s able to remove the device from the pipeline while still allowing product to flow.
5:47
Now, this pipeline eventually emerges from the mountains into another golf course, this time
5:51
just south of the town of Eagle. From there it connects to another pipeline—right continues east,
5:57
but left eventually dead-ends just a few miles down the road. This is common, because
6:02
while one major category of customers for these long-distance transmission pipelines is the local
6:07
utilities that distribute gas to local users, the other big customers are large industrial
6:12
facilities that use so much natural gas that they have a direct connection to the long-distance
6:18
pipelines. In this case, it’s a plant that turns gypsum mined nearby into plaster drywall, and it's
6:23
energy-intensive enough that the facility operates its own 6 megawatt natural gas power plant.
6:29
The rest of the pipeline, though, more or less follows the path of route 6, then diverts south
6:33
over a set of hills before reconnecting with the highway and ending up here—another compressor
6:38
station. Although, this compressor station isn’t operated by Black Hills Energy like the pipeline
6:43
up until this point—it’s operated by Xcel Energy. That’s because here, the pipeline’s ownership
6:49
changes, which is also abundantly common. Pipelines in the US are highly regulated by
6:56
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and, as part of that, interstate pipeline operators are
7:01
required to provide non-discriminatory open-access to all qualified shippers. Effectively, they’re
7:07
not even allowed to provide preference to their own product. FERC also regulates rates—Black Hills
7:13
Energy, for example, is allowed to charge $36.87 to reserve a dekatherm of pipeline capacity during
7:19
the winter, when demand is higher. That guarantees capacity, then they’ll charge another 10 cents
7:25
per dekatherm for the actual transmission. Alternately, shippers can pay just 94 cents
7:30
per dekatherm, with no capacity charge, for “interruptible transportation,” where product
7:34
is shipped only if there is available capacity. The fact that this system is open access is
7:39
ultimately how product can find its way through the nation’s web of pipelines all the way from
7:43
where it’s produced. A shipper might pay a dozen different companies for their transmission service
7:48
to get the gas from its origin. And in the case of an end-user in Colorado,
7:52
it’s quite likely that the origin for its gas is here—Texas’ Permian Basin.
7:59
There, the natural gas is extracted from the ground and processed into its commodity form.
8:03
The area’s primary industry is the more lucrative oil production, but natural gas
8:08
is often a byproduct of that. Still to this day, many rigs burn off natural gas if they lack the
8:13
infrastructure to divert it for sale, but an increasing number do capture both. But whether
8:19
extracted via combined or dedicated rigs, it is often difficult to fluctuate production quickly
8:24
to match demand. And demand fluctuates wildly considering so much of the use of the gas is for
8:30
heating. So that’s the role of these 400 different natural gas storage sites dotted across America.
8:36
Some of these sites are just the very areas where gas was previously extracted from—depleted
8:41
underground caverns. Once all of that original gas is gathered, the giant Swiss-cheese holes
8:46
in the ground—sometimes spanning thousands of acres—sit empty and that makes them ideal for
8:51
storage. They also already have existing wells, existing extraction and injection methods,
8:56
and existing pipeline connections. Here, gas is reinjected into the impermeable natural caverns
9:01
some 1,000 to 5,000 feet, or 300 to 1,500 meters below the ground, where the working
9:07
gas—the natural gas that is commodified—occupies the upper part of the cavern and a cushion gas
9:12
maintains a pressure buffer at the bottom. Because the depleted natural gas fields are established,
9:17
proven, and widespread, their geology and infrastructure generally makes them the most
9:21
inexpensive and easiest way to store natural gas. There is, however, another method that crept into
9:27
more use about a decade ago as the country ramped up some storage capacity: Salt caverns,
9:32
which can quickly turn over storage since they can accept a higher ratio of working
9:37
gas to cushion gas. Leaching out and creating salt caverns is expensive, but because of their high
9:42
withdrawal and injection rate—which can cycle up to 12 times per year—that cost can be justified.
9:48
This short withdrawal cycle is ideal for pumping energy into power plants during peak periods,
9:52
and because more natural salt caverns are found in the South and Gulf area, this is
9:57
where they’re increasingly being put to use. The third type, similar to depleted oil fields
10:02
in structure, are drained aquifers. These share the characteristics of being underground natural
10:06
storage areas, but because they were previously stored water the surfaces can be permeable and
10:11
the caverns less explored. It’s more expensive to transform aquifers into natural gas storage
10:16
so it’s primarily done in areas, like the Midwest, where depleted oil fields are less
10:20
common. Furthermore, aquifers require up to 80 percent cushion gas, meaning the amount
10:25
of working gas they actually hold is far less than something like a salt cavern,
10:29
making injection and withdrawal more difficult. But not all the gas extracted in Texas,
10:35
or anywhere in the US for that matter, will even be used in the US. Increasingly, gas is not only
10:41
transported across a continent, but across the world. And to get to such far-flung markets,
10:47
it’s moved as a liquid, crossing oceans, gulfs, seas, and straits in one of these.
10:53
This is a Q-Max class liquefied natural gas carrier. There are 14 of them worldwide, and their
10:58
classification signals that they are the very largest vessel capable of docking at Qatar’s LNG
11:04
terminals, making them the largest LNG carriers in the world. But in terms of sheer capacity, these
11:10
are small in comparison to their conventional oil tanker contemporaries. A Q-Max can carry
11:15
some 266,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas whereas the world’s largest TI-class supertankers
11:22
can carry up to 450,000 cubic meters of oil. And yet these conventional oil tankers, with their
11:28
superior storage, come at a fraction of the cost of a LNG carrier, as the last TI-class supertanker
11:34
cost $82 million in 2003, while a Q-Max runs in the $200 to $300 million range. While smaller,
11:43
more expensive to build, and more expensive to maintain given the requirement of keeping natural
11:47
gas in a fluid state, experts believe there will soon be more LNG tankers plodding across
11:52
the oceans than oil tankers. The reason as to why has to do with some geography and some physics.
11:59
On a global scale, the demand for natural gas is in places far from the supply. In 2023, these
12:05
three countries were the largest LNG importers in the world, with China narrowly outpacing Japan.
12:11
For decades, these three countries have been at the top of the list, with Japan the world’s
12:15
number one year in year out until 2021. And for two of these three countries, total consumption
12:22
exactly matches or very nearly matches imports. Put simply: Japan has very limited natural gas,
12:29
and South Korea has almost none. And while China does have a strong domestic supply,
12:34
it cannot nearly keep pace with its own demand. The difficulty is, most of the big suppliers are
12:40
far away and across oceans that make any sort of pipeline project infeasible. So geography
12:46
has dictated if natural gas is to get from the US or Qatar or Russia or Norway or Australia,
12:52
it’s likely going to be by ship. But it’s physics that makes natural
12:56
gas cost competitive. For natural gas to enter a liquid state, it needs to be cooled to and
13:01
kept at -260° Fahrenheit or -162° Celsius—which is what makes LNG ships so expensive to build
13:10
and expensive to run. But it’s worth the trade off because once cooled into a liquid, natural
13:15
gas shrinks to 1/600th of its previous volume. While natural gas has been lobbied as a cleaner,
13:21
more efficient energy source by proponents, it’s really this incredible transformation
13:25
from voluminous gas to energy dense liquid that makes this energy source so remarkable, and now,
13:31
so important on a global scale. By keeping the gas at -260 Fahrenheit, the common adage goes,
13:37
a beach ball’s worth of gas shrinks down to the size of a ping pong ball. But that example lacks
13:42
scale. Phrased in another way, that a single ship’s worth of LNG becomes 600 ship’s worth
13:48
of gas in its natural state, it becomes easier to understand why LNG has skyrocketed in trade
13:53
volume decade after decade—even if it’s incredibly expensive and labor intensive
13:59
to keep the stuff at such a cold temperature. Before liquid natural gas can be loaded onto
14:04
an expensive boat, it needs to be cooled down at an expensive liquefaction facility. At each
14:09
liquefaction facility there are what the industry calls trains—where the gas is treated to remove
14:14
impurities, then progressively cooled to turn raw gas into clean gas then clean gas into liquid
14:19
gas. At Sabine Pass in coastal Louisiana, the oldest operational liquefaction terminal in the
14:25
US—as well as the largest—there are currently six separate functional trains. The first five cost,
14:31
as estimated by Cheniere Energy which owns and operates the facility, between $17.5 and $18.5
14:37
billion dollars to build, while the sixth added later cost of about $2.5 billion. After trains,
14:43
the product is then stored, awaiting a ship. At Sabine Pass, LNG is stored in five separate
14:49
tanks capable of holding an absurd 500 million cubic meters worth of gas. Once a ship has been
14:55
positioned in a vessel berth—of which Sabine Pass has three—and once the ship’s tanks have
14:59
been cleaned and prepared to take on the freezing liquid, loading arms are then bolted onto the
15:03
ship and the filling process begins while crews monitor ice build up on the adjoining pipes. If
15:08
the ship’s tanks have already been cooled, filling will take up to about 15 hours. This process needs
15:13
to be fairly quick, as Chenaire reported that it filled 423 cargoes in 2022, and 425 in 2023.
15:21
Once the liquid natural gas is on the move, it’s now the job of tanker operators to monitor its
15:25
freezing cargo and minimize loss on account of off-boiling. There are two main categories of
15:30
LNG tankers—those with independent tanks, like the recognizable Moss-style with its spherical tanks,
15:35
and those with the less distinguishable integral tank—where the tank functions as a part of the
15:40
hull. The former is older, deals with less sloshing—a danger that can damage tanks or
15:45
increase boil-off inside the tank—and is reliably safe on account of the tank’s isolation from the
15:49
hull. The latter is capable of carrying far more and because of this are becoming more prevalent,
15:54
and are reliably safe on account of the tank’s pliability should the hull be struck. But both
15:59
rely less on continuously cooling their product than just keeping it cold in the first place,
16:03
as both tank structures are maximally insulated with more than 20 centimeters of foam and multiple
16:08
barriers surrounding the tanks. Still, some boil-off is bound to occur, but rather smartly,
16:14
that’s what powers the boat. And should the tank experience too much boil-off, there are systems
16:19
in place to slow the process, whether by running gas back through reliquification, or by cooling
16:24
the tank by spraying liquid from the bottom of the tank in the gap at the top. Keeping an eye on
16:29
all this is a crew of about 20-29 members, with at least one cargo engineer focused on the
16:34
composition of gas within the tanks specifically. Upon reaching its port of call, the process is
16:38
effectively reversed, in a similarly labor and infrastructure intensive process with
16:43
regasification equipment in place of trains. Ultimately, for as dispersed as users of natural
16:49
gas are, and diverse as the uses of natural gas are, the process of making, moving, and
16:53
regassing LNG is remarkably confined. Across the world’s two largest LNG producers, LNG exporting
17:00
is confined to only seven active locations—6 in the US and just one in Qatar. And as for imports,
17:07
Japan with the longest history of LNG reliance is home to around just 30 regasification plants.
17:14
But like all fossil fuels, demand for natural gas is expected to soon peak. New buildings are
17:19
increasingly being built with heat pumps, electric water heaters, induction stovetops, and other
17:24
cleaner, more efficient electric alternatives. In fact, already, in New York City, for example,
17:29
certain new buildings are banned from adding natural gas hookups. So this incredible network
17:34
of pipelines and tankers will grow increasingly irrelevant in the coming decades. For now, though,
17:40
it’s one of the world’s most fascinating interconnected distribution systems.
17:46
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18:02
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18:07
next thing I did was look for a solution—you could actually file takedown requests with these sites,
18:12
but it took forever just to do one, let alone all of them. So eventually,
18:17
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18:22
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18:27
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18:31
filing takedown requests on your behalf. They even handle objections from the data-brokers,
18:35
so it’s completely hands-off for you. And, if you’re wondering, one of the customers of these
18:39
data-brokers is those spammers that keep calling you. This is how they get your info, so Icogni can
18:44
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