{"id":3352,"date":"2019-06-13T21:50:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T21:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=3352"},"modified":"2019-06-13T21:50:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T21:50:21","slug":"new-gas-to-methanol-technology-oxe-could-end-oil-well-flaring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=3352","title":{"rendered":"New gas-to-methanol technology OxE could end oil well \u201cflaring\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Oil wells also release natural gas. But it\u2019s burnt off<\/em><\/strong><em>\u00a0on site whenever the economics of collecting and piping it don\u2019t add up (gas can\u2019t use the existing petroleum infrastructure). What if it could be converted into methanol, says\u00a0<\/em><strong><em>Nichole Liebov at the University of Virginia<\/em><\/strong><em>. She describes a new process called\u00a0<\/em><strong><em>oxyesterification (OxE) that converts methane (the main constituent of natural gas) into methanol cost effectively at low temperatures and pressures<\/em><\/strong><em>. More work is being done to optimise the process and make it scalable. But without such a solution\u00a0<\/em><strong><em>we will continue to \u201cflare\u201d the gas, adding 300m tons of CO2 to the world\u2019s atmosphere annually<\/em><\/strong><em>.<\/em><span id=\"more-24215\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Natural gas, which consists primarily of methane<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>accounts for nearly\u00a0<\/strong><strong>one quarter<\/strong><strong>\u00a0of global energy production<\/strong>. Although\u00a0the\u00a0<strong>shale gas<\/strong>\u00a0boom\u00a0significantly increased the supply of natural gas,\u00a0<strong>natural gas cannot be transported to processing plants<\/strong>\u00a0using existing infrastructure for petroleum.<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, remote sources of natural gas are in effect \u201cstranded.\u201d Methods to use this \u201cstranded\u201d natural gas productively would be highly beneficial and would reduce unproductive flaring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oil wells also release natural gas. But it\u2019s burnt off\u00a0on site whenever the economics of collecting and piping it don\u2019t add up (gas can\u2019t use the existing petroleum infrastructure). What if it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,82,87,90,96,99,107,109,111,113,137,139,146,148,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,262,263,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-3352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}