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SUMMARY OF THE USES OF NATURAL GAS |
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1- Where de word “Gas” comes from?
a) Paracelsus (alchemist who lived between 1493 and 1541) managed to produce hydrogen, which is an inflammable gas, by pouring acids upon metals. He called this gas “wild spirit”
b) Jan Batiste Van Helmont (Belgium chemist, who lived from 1577 till 1644) obtained another inflammable gas with the distillation of different organic materials and called it “gist” that means spirit (in English ghost), and from gist it came the word gas.
The Helmont’s gas was a mixture of gases with an important proportion of methane
2- City Gas or Manufactured Gas
In the 17 th Robert Boyle (Ireland 1627-1691) got inflammable gas with distillation of coal
In the 18th century Philippe Lebon , or le Bon, (France 1767-1804) obtained inflammable gas with the distillation of wood. He wanted to use this gas to light a gas lamp he had invented with the purpose of illuminating streets but this was only possible when Frederick Albert Winsor (Germany 1763-1830) improved Lebon’s method with coal distillation and the first street in London, Pall Mall, was lighted.
This gas was not a natural gas since it was manufactured and during most of the 19th century, was used almost exclusively as a source of light. Without a pipeline infrastructure, it was difficult to transport the gas very far, therefore it was produced near the big cities and it was called City Gas.
Near the end of the 19th century, with the rise of electricity, gas lights were converted to electric lights. This led producers of gas to look for new uses for their product.
In 1885, Robert Bunsen invented what is now known as the Bunsen burner. He managed to create a device that mixed natural gas with air in the right proportions, creating a flame that could be safely used for cooking and heating. The invention of the Bunsen burner opened up new opportunities for the use of natural gas. The invention of temperature-regulating thermostatic devices allowed for better use of the heating potential of natural gas, allowing the temperature of the flame to be adjusted and monitored, therefore it began to be used for cooking and for hitting, which it was needed suitable net pipelines for and this settled the infrastructure for the later natural gas introduction
3- The Natural Gas
However there is a natural inflammable natural gas under the crust’s earth. In Ancient day such things as lightning strikes would ignite natural gas that was escaping. This would create a fire coming from the earth, burning the natural gas as it seeped out from underground. These fires puzzled most early civilizations, and were the root of much myth and superstition. One of the most famous of these types of flames was found in ancient Greece, on Mount Parnassus approximately 1,000 B.C. A goat herdsman came across what looked like a 'burning spring', a flame rising from a fissure in the rock. The Greeks, believing it to be of divine origin, built a temple on the flame. This temple housed a priestess who was known as the Oracle of Delphi, giving out prophecies she claimed were inspired by the flame.
These types of springs became prominent in the religions of India, Greece, and Persia. Unable to explain where these fires came from, they were often regarded as divine, or supernatural. It wasn't until about 500 B.C. that the Chinese discovered the potential to use these fires to their advantage. Finding places where gas was seeping to the surface, the Chinese formed crude pipelines out of bamboo shoots to transport the gas, where it was used to boil sea water, separating the salt and making it drinkable. But this technology didn’t came to Europe till the end of the18th century
The first country to use natural gas was United States of America when about 1920's made a significant effort to build a pipeline infrastructure to profit the natural gas from the oil drills. Up to this moment this gas was burn outside the wells or send to the atmosphere. But after World War II welding techniques, pipe rolling, and metallurgical advances allowed for the construction of reliable pipelines. This led to a post-war pipeline construction boom lasting well into the 60's, creating thousands of miles of pipeline in America.
4-The city gas in Spain
Spain's interest in natural gas as an energy source began in the first half of the 19th century, when in 1826 chemistry professor Josep Roura (Spain 1787-1860) became the first in Europe to succeed in producing a gas light with gas from coal and lighted the first building which was “La Llotja” in Barcelona.
Roura was commissioned by then King Ferdinand VII to provide lighting for the Queen’s procession when his daughter was born in 1832. For this purpose Roura built the country's first gas plant in Madrid and a temporary grid of 100 gas-powered streetlights. Following that display, Roura was asked by the royal family to build a gas-powered lighting facility for the royal palace in Oriente. Barcelona’s council invited companies to compete for lighting the streets of the city. They wanted to replace the 38 000 oil lamps with 652 gas streetlights with the half money spent. The French businessman Charles Lebon won the competition and in 1842 Barcelona’s streets were lighted with gas lamps. One year afterwards, Charles Lebon became associated with the brothers Serra and they stablished “Sociedad Catalana para el alumbrado por Gas (SCAG)”. The factory was settled inside the city by the sea. SCAG quickly attracted investors and by 1845 had become one of Spain's largest companies. SCAG listed its shares on the “Bolsa de Madrid” as early as 1853 In Madrid, meanwhile, another group of investors, backed by British capital, launched “Madrileña por Gas (Gas Madrid)” in order to install a gas lighting network in that city as well. That business started up in 1846 and remained one of Spain's major gas producers and distributors. In 1864 Lebon split up with SCAG and Gas Lebon joined “Madrileña por gas”
The advent of electrical lighting put an end to the growth of the coal gas-based networks by the dawn of the 20th century. As Spain phased out its gas-light networks, SCAG and the other gas distributors reacted by investing in electrical power generation. In 1896, for example, SCAG and Gas Lebon joined together to build the Central Catalana de Electricidad. In 1911, SCAG founded Sociedad General de Fuerzas Hidroelectricas and built its first hydroelectric plants in the Pyrenees mountains. The following year, SCAG bought Central Catalana de Electricidad. The company's growing interest in electrical power generation was reflected in its name change to Catalana de Gas y Electricidad (CGE). That company continued to grow until the Spanish Civil War. Acquisitions of other gas companies in the Catalan region remained a part of the company's growth. The bombing of the company's Barcelona gasworks reduced CGE's production capacity during and after the war. Shortages of raw materials, exacerbated by the outbreak of World War II, made it difficult for CGE to rebuild. The lack of coke also hampered CGE's ability to produce gas into the late 1950s.
Gassing Up in the 1960s
CGE began investigating new sources of gas in the early 1960s, and in 1963 the company began producing gas based on naphtha, rather than coal, for the first time. More important for the company, however, was the discovery of vast natural gas fields, including the ones on the coast in nearby Algeria. The promise of producing gas more easily and less expensively encouraged CGE to abandon its electricity wing in the early 1960s and refocus itself entirely as a gas business. The company then began an extensive modernization effort in order to adapt its distribution network for the reception of natural gas.
The first shipments of natural gas arrived in Spain via methane tankers in 1969 for treatment in a purpose-built re-gasification plant in Barcelona. Meanwhile CGE had begun to expand beyond the Catalan region, buying Compania Española de Gas, a distributor of gas to the Valencia region. Over the next decades, CGE continued to construct a national network. The company also began building a fleet of methane tankers, and later became one of the world's leading transporters of natural gas. Limited supply (as Spain had no natural gas fields of its own) meant that the use of natural gas was slow to spread in Spain, however. In Madrid, for example, Gas Madrid continued to rely on its production of naphtha gas until the late 1980s. The 1990s marked a new era for CGE and for Spain's natural gas sector. In 1991, the Spanish government led a restructuring of the domestic gas industry, merging CGE with Gas Madrid to form a new company, Gas Natural. To this business was added the gas distribution pipeline operated by Spanish petroleum giant Repsol. That company then became one of Gas Natural's major shareholders. Gas Natural's relationship with Repsol (later Repsol-YPF) brought it to Repsol's primary expansion market in South America. In 1992, Gas Natural joined Repsol in Argentina, taking 50 percent of Gas Natural BAN. That company became primarily active in service to the area around Buenos Aires. Back at home, Gas Natural strengthened its grip on the Spanish natural gas market when the government pushed through a merger between it and far larger competitor Enagas[1]. The absorption of Enagas gave Gas Natural control of the country's gasification plants, as well as its transport network. The merged group now not only controlled the Spanish natural gas market, but also had become Europe's third largest natural gas company. The acquisition of Enagas also gave Gas Natural control of Sagane[2], which owned more than 72 percent of Metragaz[3], a joint venture created in 1992 to build and operate the Mahgreb-Europe natural gas pipeline linking Algeria and Spain across the Gibraltar Strait. By 1996, Metragaz had completed the pipeline. With this new supply of natural gas, Gas Natural was able to extend its natural gas operations across Spain for the first time. In 1999, Gas Natural created a dedicated subsidiary for its natural gas purchasing needs:” Natural Gas Aprovisionamientos”, which, supported Gas Natural's operations not only through Metragaz pipeline-based purchases, but also through supply contracts with natural gas producers in Norway, Qatar, Nigeria, and elsewhere.
In 1990 Gas Natural began its expansion in Latin America Latin American Expansion in the 1990s. Nowadays it is expanded in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico
The Spanish government began breaking up Gas Natural's domestic monopoly in 2000. Under terms governing the liberalization of the Spanish market and in line with European Union directives, Gas Natural was required to reduce its position in the Spanish market to just 60 percent by the end of the decade. By 2004, the company had made progress toward that goal, dropping its market share to 72 percent.
Gas Natural's response to the liberalization of the Spanish market took two approaches. On the one hand, the company decided to return to the electricity market and on the othe it began its expansion in Italy and Greece
Key
Dates:
1826 Lotja (Barcelona) 1843: Sociedad Catalana para el Alubrado por Gas, the predecessor to Gas Natural, is created.
1844 Valencia city 1911: The company founds Sociedad General de Fuerzas Hidroelectricas, and builds its first hydroelectric plants in the Pyrenees mountains. 1912: Central Catalana de Electricidad is acquired and its name is changed to Catalana de Gas y Electricidad (CGE). 1963: Gas Natural spins off its electricity generation operations to focus on the gas market. 1965: Compania Española de Gas is acquired. 1969: The company receives its first natural gas imports. 1991: Gas Natural is merged with Enagas. 1992: The company enters Argentina's natural gas market. 1996: The company opens the first pipeline linking Spain and natural gas fields in Algeria. 1997: Operations are launched in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. 2000: The Spanish government begins liberalizing the Spanish market, breaking up Gas Natural's monopoly; Gas Natural expands into electricity generation, sales, and distribution.
Webs used:
http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/history.asp [1] Till that moment Enagas had been the state gas company and the government decided to privatized it by selling the 91% of its shares to Gas Natural [2] Sagane a company which bought and transported gas [3] Metragaz was a company which transport gas from Hassi-R’mel in Algeria to Spain and Portugal
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