With the price of oil climbing up into the stratosphere, and concerns of energy and the environment escalating, we begin to hear from other players in the energy game. Because the truth is, that despite our obsession with crude oil and its byproducts, Americans depend on a number of sources of energy. One of the major players in the U.S. energy market is natural gas.


Although many American families and industries rely on natural gas, few may understand what it is, and where it comes from. Natural gas is colorless, odorless, and shapeless in its pure form. Although it is from the same family of hydrocarbons as crude oil, natural gas is made up of just two primary elements – carbon and hydrogen. Crude oil is of a combination of carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, metals and salts. Depending upon the combination of the elements, natural gas can be methane, ethane, propane, or butane. It is called a “natural” gas because it comes out of the ground naturally as a gas while crude oil has to be refined from its original state into a gas.

To understand how the gas was formed, you have to go back a few millions years to when all of the microscopic plants and animals in the prehistoric oceans died and sand to the bottom of the sea. The energy they absorbed from the sun while alive was stored in their bodies in carbon molecules. Over millions of years, pressure and heat rose as the layers were buried ever deeper into the sea’s floor, hence the term “fossil fuel.” The type of biomass, the amount of pressure and the degree of heat would determine whether the layers of sediment ended up as natural gas or as crude oil. Since some natural gas is deposited alongside crude all, it was often considered a byproduct of drilling. Gas and oil are formed from biomass subjected to intense heat and pressure. The process is called thermogenic. Biogenic natural gas, usually in the form of methane, is created from the byproducts of micro organisms which live in marshes, bogs and modern day landfills.

Today, natural gas meets 24 percent of the energy demand. It heats and cools 51 percent of U.S. households, provides power for industry, and fuels electrical generation plants. Because natural gas burns cleaner than gasoline or diesel, many companies and municipalities are deploying fleets of natural gas-powered cars, trucks and buses to reduce emissions. There are over 120,000 natural gas vehicles operating on American roads. About 80% of domestic production comes from wells in five states: Texas, Wyoming, New Mexico, Oregon and Louisiana. Unlike crude oil, where only 39% of the demand is met by domestic supplies, 84% of the natural gas we use is made in America. With advanced technology, the recovery of natural gas is more efficient so that domestic supplies will continue to keep pace, even as demand increases.