What is Natural Gas?

    Natural gas, the first cousin to crude oil, is a combustible fossil fuel often found in underground reservoirs and comprised of methane and other hydrocarbon compounds such as propane, butane, ethane, and pentane. It is unlike the gas that we power our cars with, because it is shapeless just like a gas such as oxygen. Natural gas in its pure form when it is just extracted is odorless but Mercaptan is added to the gas in order to detect leaks when it is being used.
     As of 2010, the world's reserves of natural gas was estimated to be able to last 58.6 years if we continue at the current rate of consumption. However, the US has seen an increase in natural gas consumption by 5.6 percent and the worldwide consumption has risen 7.4 percent. Natural gas is a fossil fuel just like oil, and it can only last for a certain amount of time, so it is important to conserve the amount that we use in our daily lives.
    The Middle East and Soviet Union areas contain about 72 percent of the world's natural gas reserves and North America contains the least amount.
However, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, natural gas is primarily a domestic energy resource. In 2008, net imports constituted only 13 percent of total US natural gas consumption.

How do we use natural gas?

  Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, is a very combustable chemical. It has the ability to heat 21 times more effectively than Carbon Dioxide, which is why much of our concerns about climate change relate to the amount of Methane in the atmosphere along with Carbon Dioxide.
However, Methane is what is being burned when natural gas is used to heat our homes, water and create electricity.
    According to the Energy Information Administration, natural gas 24 percent of the total energy consumed in the US. This chart from the EIA shows the breakdown of how natural gas power is used.

According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, natrual gas - fueled generation provides roughly one-fifth of all US electricity. This is simply a fraction of the electricity used in the country today, but it is one of the cleanest solutions, because natural gas electric power generation emits about half as much Carbon Dioxide as coal powered electricity generation per kilowatt hour.

Pros and Cons of Natural Gas

On one hand...

Natural gas is clean burning, and emits lower levels of harmful byproducts than other fossil fuels like coal and oil. While coal emits 2,249 lbs/MWh of carbon dioxide and oil emits 1672 lbs/MWh of carbon dioxide- natural gas only emits 1135 lbs/MWh. And according to the center for climate and energy solutions, vehicles fueled by natural gas can have greenhouse gas emissions that are roughly 15-30 percent lower than those that are gasoline- and diesel-fueled. 

In addition, natural gas is a primarily domestic resource. In 2008, net imports constituted only 13 percent of total U.S. natural gas consumption.

Lastly, it’s cheap! According to the New York Times, new discoveries in the United States and abroad have significantly increased known reserves, and caused natural gas prices to be relatively low in the last two years.

But on the other hand...

It’s not a completely clean and renewable resource, and it still emits CO2. According to a new study featured in National Geographic, switching from coal to natural gas would cut the warming effect in 100 years’ time by only 20 percent. But this study also says the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is so large that even a switch to carbon-free electricity couldn’t stop temperatures from rising.

And according to The New York Times, hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas, can pollute water sources including rivers and underground aquifers. They say with hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself. (But the EPA has passed a rule to curb this problem- giving companies until 2015 to start doing green completions. Read and listen to the story here.)

Even further, if natural gas were to become more in demand, prices would rise. This would make it less cost-efficient, and less attractive to users. 

'Fracking' for Natural Gas Continues to Raise Health Questions

Video from PBS NewsHour

Watch 'Fracking' for Natural Gas Continues to Raise Health Questions on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Natural gas is the cheapest it's been in a decade.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, oil now costs eight times as much as natural gas. It says this suggests that while oil and natural gas can substitute for each other in some uses, the markets for the two products are very different. Read the full article here.