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Stranded natural gas reserves

FROM A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR

The world has vast volumes of what is called ‘stranded’ natural gas. This is gas that is not considered economically exploitable for a variety of reasons. As a consequence this type of gas is usually ‘flared’, i.e., burned, at the well site, although a small amout of it is utilized one way or the other at or near the well site.

However, our ability to convert that gas into LNG and diesel type fuels is rapidly beginning to make this resource economically viable to explt.  And believe it or not, there is somewhere on the order of 6000 TCF of this gas located worldwide.

Stranded gas | Gas2 – Technologies for Releasing Reserves

What I find so interesting is that if this dry natural gas were to be converted to diesel fuel it would produce the equivalent of something on the order of 600 billion bbls of refined product. That is equivalent to roughly one half of the worlds proven reserves of crude oil. That is seven time the estimated recoverable reserves of crude thought to be exploitable in the Arctic Ocean. It is also about 4 time the current crude oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Most of this gas is found in Russia and the Mid-east and is associated with the large oilfields in those regions.

Here is a link

List of countries by natural gas proven reserves – Wikipedia, the free …

that allows you to compare the importance of stranded gas to proven exploitable reserves of gas world wide. There are roughly 300 trillion cubic meters of proven exploitable gas world wide. At 35 cu ft/meter that is roughly 11,000 trillion cu ft of proven reserves. Converted to diesel equivalent at 10,000 cu ft of dry gas per bbl of liquids that is roughly 1.1 trillion bbls of refined diesel equivalent. That is about equivalent to the worlds proven reserves of economically exploitable crude oil.

Is it any wonder that the major oil companies like Shell are moving to exploit natural gas?

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

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