by Tanada » Fri 09 Nov 2018, 09:03:12
This is not a happy chart for me. The weather pattern that caused the bitter winter of 2013-14 appears to have resumed form over the north Pacific and anyone looking at the chart can see that the winter in 2013 started with fill levels about 1200 over where they are now and ended with fill levels of under 1000. Clearly it will be better for everyone but the speculators if this pattern does not repeat! I would hate to be in a situation where the USA is trying to import LNG by February when world market prices are sky high and supply is hard to get. The USA has as I understand it only four LNG ports. It is also my understanding that the most common method for liquefying the LNG for injection into the pipeline network as gas is to burn some of it to produce the heat needed to warm it above boiling point. I don't know of anyone who uses the alternative method of bubbling ground temperature gas through the liquid to passively bring it up to boiling point without external heaters being used. Nobody that I know of uses the passive method either, simply releasing it slowly into the pipeline network and letting the ground around the pipe warm it to boiling point as it trickles up stream. Liquid methane boils at -164C and gets moved on tankers at around -175C so it doesn't take a huge change to return it to gas state of existence. Even just blowing room temperature gas from the network over the top of a tank of liquid will do the trick, just not very fast.
Serious question, has anyone tried injecting LNG into old dry natural gas reservoirs? It occurs to me you could passively heat a large quantity as it moved through the pore spaces to the extraction well. As a liquid it is dense enough you could effectively just pour it down the injection well without heavy pumping so long as the reservoir was dry rock. Moisture would be a show stopper as the LNG would cause freeze plugs to form very quickly.
I should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.