Natural Gas

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THE NONRENEWABLE RESOURCE FORMATION Like oil, natural is a product of decomposed organic matter, usually from ancient marine microorganisms left on the bottom of bodies of waters mixed with mud, silt, and sand on the sea floor, gradually becoming buried over time. Since it is sealed off in an oxygen-free environment and exposed to increasing amounts of heat and pressure, the organic matters undergo a thermal breakdown process that converts it into hydrocarbons. The lightest of these hydrocarbons exit in the gaseous state under normal conditions and are known collectively as natural gas. Once this natural gas forms, it depends on two very critical characteristics of the surrounding rock: porosity and permeability. POPOSITY is referred to as the amount of empty space there is within the grains of the rock. Highly porous rocks like sandstones, on a good day have porosities of 5% to 25%. this gives them a large amount of space to store fluids like oil, water, and gas. PERMEABILITY is a measure of the degree in which the pore spaces in a rock are interconnected. A rock with high permeability will let more gas and liquids to flow very easily through the rock. After natural gas forms, it then rises to the top of the surface through the pores spaces in the rock because of its low density compared to the surrounding rock. MAJOR RESERVES AND HOW THE GAS IS EXTRACTED The biggest reserve of natural gas is in...Russia!, which has seven times the reserves of the U.S. Our country is endowed with a substantial resource of natural gas and new findings has revised that number in the upward position in the last few years. But, what we Americans do best, we use more gas every year than can be produced so we depend on the Canadian... ... middle of paper ... ...ting unconventional sources of gas have dramatically raised estimates of the U.S.'s available gas resource. In the short, renewable energy added to the grid just may displace natural gas use, because natural gas power typically has the highest operating costs. In the long, increased amounts of renewable energies are more likely to encourage the use of natural gas as a complementary source of power. Natural gas plants have the operational flexibility to vary their production rapidly, so this will allow them to be able to provide more reliability to the electric power system as it transitions to greater shares of renewable generation. Works Cited Malouf, Agnes and David Wimberly The Health Hazard of Natural Gas http://www.environmentalhealth.ca/summer01gas.html How Natural Gas Works http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/ener...

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