Saturday, May 5, 2012

Exporting LNG Sounds Like A Pain In The Ass

The process is described in the midst of a conspiracy theory about Dick Cheney, Halliburton, fracking and LNG terminals:
Gas is typically shipped via pipeline when taken to market on contiguous land masses, but that is impossible, for obvious reasons, when seeking overseas markets.
LNG terminals super-chill gas at approximately −260 °F to liquid form and load it under extreme pressure into specially designed tankers for shipment overseas. Once at its desired destination, the LNG must be re-gasified before it can be fed into pipelines for domestic markets and local distribution.
Beyond Sabine Pass, there are two other terminals currently awaiting a FERC stamp of approval — in Freeport, Texas, and Corpus Christi, Texas — with other proposed export terminals located in Oregon, Texas, Lousiana, and Maryland in earlier stages of the approval process.
The gas sojourning to these terminals will come mainly from gas fracked from shale basins around the country, ranging from the Niobrara Shale in the western U.S.; to the Haynesville, Eagle Ford, Barnett and Fayetteville Shale basins in the southern U.S., to the famous Marcellus Shale in the northeastern U.S. This, in of itself, has created an underlooked and loosely regulated shale gas pipeline boom.
Industry insiders say exports are necessary due to a market glut created by the shale gas revolution.
“The projected U.S. demand is not sufficient to absorb the supply from these fields,” Richard Gordon of Gordon Energy Solutions told The Wall Street Journals MarketWatch in December 2011.
That doesn't seem like a good energy ROI.  I would think that if there is so much gas in U.S. shale formations, there would be shitloads in other shale formations around the world.  It would seem like the solution would be to drill in those places, not to ship LNG from here to there.  But hey, I wouldn't overproduce natural gas so that we have too much gas to store, if I was in charge.

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