Clean Natural Gas

Natural gas is the fastest and most economical path to significantly reducing U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide from power generation, while minimizing our impact on the land and use of our water resources. The many environmental benefits in accelerating the use of natural gas is another reason why we believe natural gas should be an important part of the energy future. For more information, visit our Power In Cooperation natural gas website. 

 

 

Liquefied Natural Gas

The Darwin LNG plant in Australia uses the ConocoPhillips Optimized Cascade® Process as the basis for its LNG technology.

More than one-third of the world’s natural gas resources are classified as stranded, meaning they are located too far from a market or are too economically challenged to support development. Historically, much of the stranded gas produced in conjunction with crude oil was simply disposed of by either flaring or reinjection into a subsurface formation.

We are exploring ways to apply our liquefied natural gas (LNG) expertise to unlock stranded gas in remote regions of the world. We would then use this gas to supply markets where this fuel can play an important role in satisfying future energy needs and, through substitution for more carbon-intensive fuels, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to minus 161 degrees Celsius (minus 256 degrees Fahrenheit), at which point it condenses to a liquid. This process, called liquefaction, reduces natural gas to one-six-hundredth of its original volume, making it economical to ship LNG over long distances in specially designed oceangoing tankers. At its destination, the LNG is converted back to gas (regasified) and piped to customers for use in power generation and industrial, residential and commercial applications.

ConocoPhillips has been an industry leader in LNG technology and project management for more than four decades. Our proprietary ConocoPhillips Optimized Cascade^® process was developed in the 1960s for use at our LNG facility in Kenai, Alaska, which is still an industry model for safety, efficiency and reliability. We began marketing our liquefaction technology to other operators in the 1990s and have sold licenses to the owners of plants in Trinidad and Tobago, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Angola and Australia.

In 2006, we began producing LNG at a new liquefaction plant near Darwin, Australia, to supply customers in Japan. It is the first LNG plant to use high-efficiency gas turbines to power the refrigeration compressors, which combined with waste heat recovery units, reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In October 2008, ConocoPhillips and Origin Energy closed on a transaction to create a long-term natural gas business focused on coalbed methane production in Australia and LNG processing and sales. Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG) intends to develop Australia’s largest coalbed methane reserves base into a coalbed methane-to-LNG project capable of delivering 14 million metric tons annually. The project will create a new Australian LNG business hub serving Asia-Pacific and other international markets. LNG exports from the first train are scheduled to start in 2015.

ConocoPhillips is also building liquefaction plants including Qatargas 3 in Qatar in which we own 30 percent interest and

which has production capacity of approximately 7.8 million metric tons of LNG per year. LNG has been transported safely around the world for approximately 45 years. It is shipped in specially designed double-hulled tankers and does not need to be stored under pressure. The Qatargas 3 project uses a new class of LNG supertanker, substantially larger than current carriers.