Natural Gas Facts

Overview

Natural Gas Fun Facts

Natural gas is used to heat your house, power your dryer, and cook your food, but it’s also used to create fabrics, plastics, and fertilizers!
Did you know that thousands of products from your daily life got their start from natural gas?
- Products found in your home such as vinyl flooring, carpeting, and piping all are made using natural gas. Your roof, furniture, and paint also come from natural gas.
- Natural gas is an important part of making ammonia, a major component used to make fertilizer which allows farmers to grow their crops.
- Natural gas is also used for many if the medicine and health supplies we use every day. Aspirin, children's car seats, artificial limbs, and even heart valves all use natural gas.
- Many of our everyday accessories are also made possible by natural gas. Sun glasses, deodorant, lipstick, facial makeup, cameras, cell phones, and our computers are made with natural gas.
So the next time you buy a new shirt, take out the garbage, or enjoy some farm-grown veggies, natural gas will be allowing you to do so!
“Christmas trees” are used year round in the natural gas industry, not just during the holidays, but they are a little different than the one next you your fireplace. A Christmas tree is an assembly of valves, spools, and fittings designed to control the flow in or out of the gas well. It also is used to detect sand, corrosion, temperature, erosion, and pressure.
The first record of igniting natural gas was in 1000 B.C. when a fissure created an “eternal flame” in Mount Parnassus, Greece.
The first pipelines were built in China in 500 B.C. The lines, made out of bamboo, moved gas which was used to make evaporated salt brine.
The first natural gas well was dug in 1821 by William Hart in New York. Hart’s well was only 27 feet deep. Today’s wells can be 30,000 feet deep!
If natural gas is cooled to -260 degrees Fahrenheit (the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth was -128 degrees), it is becomes condensed into a liquid that takes up only 1/600th of the volume of its gaseous state. This is especially useful for transporting natural gas across oceans where pipelines do not exist.
There are over 11 million vehicles that run on natural gas as a fuel supply! This vehicles use natural gas in either a compressed or liquefied state to power their transportation. There are cars, busses, taxis, and trucks.