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Gas: The Cleanest Fossil Fuel

Liquefied Natural Gas (1/14)

A view of Hammerfest, the Arctic boom town. The whole town was lit up by a giant 100-meter-high (320 feet) flame erupting from a flare tower at the Snoehvit complex.

Snoehvit, a facility where natural gas is converted to liquid form for easier transportation or storage, is the first facility in the Arctic and Europe to export liquefied natural gas (LNG). LNG produces less pollution than other fossil fuels when being burned. However, the energy needed to transport it at more than 160 degrees Celsius and convert it back to a usable makes LNG a major source of greenhouse gases. (Photo: Reuters)

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Gas: The Cleanest Fossil Fuel

From the Bowels of the Earth (2/14)

A gas bubble appears from a mud volcano in Berca village, Romania in October 2007. Mud volcanoes are small volcano-shaped structures that have been formed as mud and volcanic gases from a depth of 3,000 meters rise to the surface. All over the world, natural gas deposits, millions of years old, are locked away under massive layers of stone and sediment. (Photo: Reuters)

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Transportation (3/14)

Gas is being pumped into a car in Lima, Peru. Compressed natural gas, also called autogas, can be used as a cleaner alternative to other automobile fuels such as petrol or diesel.

Although natural gas vehicles are almost as energy efficient as vehicles that run with gasoline, its use is common in only a few countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and India. (Photo: Reuters)

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Flying with Gas (4/14)

An Airbus A380 takes off for a test flight with a mix of 60 percent conventional kerosene and 40 percent synthetic GTL jet fuel made from natural gas in February 2008.

Airbus announced that Qatar Airways might be the first airline to use natural gas GTL fuel in A380s. Qatar has huge reserves of gas, and plans to build a GTL plant. GTL fuels would also contain significantly less carbon dioxide than conventional kerosene. (Photo: Reuters)

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Gas: The Cleanest Fossil Fuel

Cooking with Gas (5/14)

A Kashmiri man pushes a handcart with gas cylinders in Srinagar, India. Propane and other forms of gas made from natural gas are important cooking fuels in many developing countries and rural areas. Rising gas prices hit poor nations especially hard. (Photo: Reuters)

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Gas Extraction Canada (6/14)

A worker walks past a gas drilling well east of Calgary, Canada. Canada is the third-largest producer of gas in the world and number one supplier of natural gas imports to the United States.

With the lowest CO2 emissions per unit of energy, natural gas is considered the most environmentally friendly fossil fuel. However, the drilling of holes for exploration and extraction of natural gas leads to relatively high production costs. Many extraction sites also suffer serious environmental damage. (Photo: Reuters)

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Gas: The Cleanest Fossil Fuel

Gas Extraction Peru (7/14)

An old train (left) passes by a new one that will run on methane gas in Lima, Peru. A Peruvian rail company converted the first locomotive in the world that will run on natural gas.

The gas comes from the Camisea gas reserves in the Amazon jungle. Camisea is expected to have a number of important economic benefits for Peru. But the gas extraction site in the Amazon basin and the 430-mile gas pipeline to Peru's coast has destroyed large patches of rainforest and polluted local rivers damaging the livelihoods of local native communities. (Photo: Reuters)

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Energy Dependence (8/14)

Russia holds one-third of the world’s known natural gas reserves and owns a major share of the company that controls the world’s largest supply network: Gazprom.

Most European countries depend on Russian gas, which is pumped through a complex network of pipelines leading from Russia to Western Europe. Russia is the origin of 75-100 percent of their gas imports. Stronger competition and further development of Russia’s economy could lower prices, but the Russian government is rather consolidating its grip on oil and gas, pursuing a strategy that could increase Europe's dependence on Russian energy. (Photo: Reuters)

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Europe is Hungry for Gas (9/14)

Gazprom workers prepare to weld a section of a gas pipeline from the enormous Yuzhno Russkoye gas field in northwest Siberia, which will feed the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.(Photo: Reuters)

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LNG Supertanker (10/14)

The 216,000-cubic-meter Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) carrier named "Al Gattara" sails during its trial, off the coast of South Korea. A new generation of supertankers and rising oil and gas prices have made shipment of LNG an interesting alternative where pipelines are not possible. (Photo: Reuters)

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LNG Supertanker (11/14)

Storing liquefied natural gas (LNG) takes up only about 1/600th of the volume of uncompressed natural gas. Storing it needs special high pressure tanks that can cool the gas to approximately −163 °C (−260 °F).

The tank pictured here belongs to at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s (TEPCO) Futtsu Thermal Power Station east of Tokyo. With no domestic gas resources, Japan has been relying on LNG for decades. (Photo: Reuters)

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Wasting Gas and Money (12/14)

World Bank economists estimate that over 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas worth more than 30 billion dollars are wasted annually through flaring or venting. This would be enough to provide Germany and France with gas for one year. Flaring is common in Nigeria, Russia, Iran, and elsewhere. Russia, however, announced it would prohibit flaring in 2008. (Photo: Reuters)

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Greenhouse Gases through Flaring Gas (13/14)

For decades, excess gas from oil wells has been flared or simply vented. Studies have shown, however, that in the 1970s, flaring accounted for roughly two percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, but has now dropped to about half a percent of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions. (Photo: Reuters)

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Targetting Infrastructure (12/14)

A woman and a child wear masks to protect themselves from the fumes rising from an exploded gas pipeline in Mexico in 2007. Leftist rebels attacked the pipes, disrupting oil and natural gas supplies. (Photo: Reuters)

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