Natural Gas

The search for natural gas is taking drillers and their rigs to frontier regions such as the deepwater Gulf of Mexico as well as the Beaufort Sea.

Yet, if you look to the heavens you find that methane may be one of the most easily found gases in the universe — even though it is still out of reach. Scientists at the University of London in late Marc published findings that probably had more tan a few drilling engineers looking up at the sky.

The scientists said their research showed methane in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-size plaet called HD 189733B orbiting a star in the constellation Vulpecula — roughly 63 light years from Earth. The planet with the odd na now joins a host of worlds in our Solar System that contain metane — Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and tiny Pluto is thought to have an atmosphere of frozen methane thousands of miles thick.

On Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, a recent NASA report said that liquid methane literally drizzles on the surface. Falling from methane ice clouds, the liquid natural gas creates mud on the surface of the moon.

Still, even with natural gas reaching $11/MMBtu back here on Earth, the picture of pools of methane on Titan or in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light years away seems intriguing “but it’s still just something to dream about,” sad one Houston-based engineer. “It’s fun to think about, but I think most of us are keeping our focus right here on Mother Earth — at least for the time being.”

That focus on looking for oil and natural gas on Mother Earth means that 1,889 rigs were working recently, according to the latest Baker Hughes rig report. The report, which has tracked rig counts since 1944, showed that 1,494 were being used to fin natural gas ad 386 for oil with the remaining 10 listed as simply miscellaneous.

A year ago at this same time, the number of active rigs was 1,760. The Baker Hughes report showed that numbers of rigs in use peaked in 1981 at the height of the oil boom with 4,530 rigs in operation.

John A. Sullivan, News Editor, Oil and Gas Investor, www.OilandGasInvestor.com, jsullivan@hartenergy.com

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