Natural Gas, where does it come from?

One of today’s most popular sources of energy is natural gas. Even though it belongs to the family of the hydrocarbons, there are a lot of differences between the traditional oils, resulting from the process of upgrading the petroleum, and the natural gas. These differences can be more appreciated in the way the resource is storage, handled, and the environmental connotations related to its production and use.
In order to understand how natural gas is used, it is very important to explain first where the source does come from. Natural gas, as it was indicated above, is a hydrocarbon that we can find in the under ground. Usually, the way to reach it is by drilling a well, a term used in the Oil & Gas industry regarding the place where great many amounts of resources, and particularly petroleum and gas could be found. Gas, generally speaking, is obtained associated or not associated with petroleum. This means that while drilling a prospective well people can obtain a fluid composed by both petroleum and gas, or a fluid whose main composition is only gas. Once the fluid has been discovered it is necessary to condition it for commercial purposes. This goal is achieved with the help of chemical and mechanical processes, whose principal objective is to remove impurities from the fluid, impurities such as water, soil, hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and carbon dioxide (CO2). However, the story does not end at the point where gas is suitably produced; moreover, it is just the starting point for a long trip. The next stage to obtaining natural gas, better known as methane (CH4) is based on a chemical process of separation, where the gas current is divided in its primary elements for which methane is the major one. Once the process of separation has been completed, the quantities of natural gas are ready to continue the journal using pipelines and many types of equipment until the end point or final customer.
This blog only covers the basic principle of natural gas production. In the next blog, I would like to talk about what makes natural gas different from other hydrocarbons.