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There should be lots to talk about in a thread devoted to Natural Gas infrastructure.
A quick history: Coal gasification, to create manufactured gas or "city gas" for lighting dates to the early 1800s. The original application was lighting (from an open flame). By the late 1800s, though, Electric lighting was about 10x cheaper, and the introduction of the mineral mantle (the white thimble-sized thing) was a last-ditch attempt to increase light output (by 3x) and slow the exodus to bulbs. It did not work. Worse, city gas had never gotten to the countryside, which converted straight from Kerosene to electric.
By 1900, the lighting business was dead, and Natural Gas also missed another window as people switched directly from coal heat to oil heat--Texan and Saudi oil was cheap and easy to tanker.
With both light and heating impractical, and left with a whole lot of sunk cost infrastructure, the gas companies promoted gas for residential cooking (and the expression "cooking with gas"), in which gas did pretty well at displacing coal, oil or wood.
Prior to 1950-ish, gas was manufactured from coal and stored in big gasometer tanks. Coal gasification produced enormous quantities of coal tar (sludge) which German chemists taught the world to turn into all kinds of chemicals and new synthesized pigments (like Magenta/).
By the 50s and 60s, transmission pipelines were bringing natural gas from TX/LA (it was a cheap by-product of the oil biz) and gas in the Northeast became cheap enough to heat your house with, and convert the lamps of Beacon Hill (which had been electric) back to an old-timey gas-with-mantle. Coal gasification ends shortly thereafter.
In 1971, the Distrigas LNG terminal opened to allow importation of gas during peak (Winter Heating) season, which was always a problem for New England since we live at the far, skinny, "demand" end of every pipeline.
In the 1990s, people switched to gas for heating to avoid oil shocks and because it was cleaner & quieter (no fuel blower or drips, as with oil). IIRC there was occasional talk of a new importation facility. Back in the 2001-era, the big thing was LNG importation security at the Distrigas (Everett) Terminal.
Then came fracked domestic gas and the idea that we had so much cheap US gas that the LNG import terminals should be repurposed for *export* or that native tribes, southcoast industrial properties, or floating offshore piers would supply the best location for an export terminal. (IIRC Louisiana won the fight for LNG liquification, partly because the gas pipelines in New England don't have enough slack capacity)
Boston has not yet gotten its increased transmission supply, so the Distrigas terminal continues to fill a role of importing natural gas (from Trinidad).
And the SJC killed the idea that the electric generating companies could contract with the gas transmission companies to bring increased gas supply for electricity-generation, but pass the costs for a gas pipeline on to electric rate payer--or was the gas rate payer? --the point is that it was a strange gas supply, electric-gen hybrid where it was unclear which ratepayers would benefit (gas or electric or neither) and which should pay for it.
Obviously the electric-generators liked cheap gas, and the pipeline companies didn't care which other people paid for it, but neither, alone, was willing to finance a pipeline.
A quick history: Coal gasification, to create manufactured gas or "city gas" for lighting dates to the early 1800s. The original application was lighting (from an open flame). By the late 1800s, though, Electric lighting was about 10x cheaper, and the introduction of the mineral mantle (the white thimble-sized thing) was a last-ditch attempt to increase light output (by 3x) and slow the exodus to bulbs. It did not work. Worse, city gas had never gotten to the countryside, which converted straight from Kerosene to electric.
By 1900, the lighting business was dead, and Natural Gas also missed another window as people switched directly from coal heat to oil heat--Texan and Saudi oil was cheap and easy to tanker.
With both light and heating impractical, and left with a whole lot of sunk cost infrastructure, the gas companies promoted gas for residential cooking (and the expression "cooking with gas"), in which gas did pretty well at displacing coal, oil or wood.
Prior to 1950-ish, gas was manufactured from coal and stored in big gasometer tanks. Coal gasification produced enormous quantities of coal tar (sludge) which German chemists taught the world to turn into all kinds of chemicals and new synthesized pigments (like Magenta/).
By the 50s and 60s, transmission pipelines were bringing natural gas from TX/LA (it was a cheap by-product of the oil biz) and gas in the Northeast became cheap enough to heat your house with, and convert the lamps of Beacon Hill (which had been electric) back to an old-timey gas-with-mantle. Coal gasification ends shortly thereafter.
In 1971, the Distrigas LNG terminal opened to allow importation of gas during peak (Winter Heating) season, which was always a problem for New England since we live at the far, skinny, "demand" end of every pipeline.
In the 1990s, people switched to gas for heating to avoid oil shocks and because it was cleaner & quieter (no fuel blower or drips, as with oil). IIRC there was occasional talk of a new importation facility. Back in the 2001-era, the big thing was LNG importation security at the Distrigas (Everett) Terminal.
Then came fracked domestic gas and the idea that we had so much cheap US gas that the LNG import terminals should be repurposed for *export* or that native tribes, southcoast industrial properties, or floating offshore piers would supply the best location for an export terminal. (IIRC Louisiana won the fight for LNG liquification, partly because the gas pipelines in New England don't have enough slack capacity)
Boston has not yet gotten its increased transmission supply, so the Distrigas terminal continues to fill a role of importing natural gas (from Trinidad).
And the SJC killed the idea that the electric generating companies could contract with the gas transmission companies to bring increased gas supply for electricity-generation, but pass the costs for a gas pipeline on to electric rate payer--or was the gas rate payer? --the point is that it was a strange gas supply, electric-gen hybrid where it was unclear which ratepayers would benefit (gas or electric or neither) and which should pay for it.
Obviously the electric-generators liked cheap gas, and the pipeline companies didn't care which other people paid for it, but neither, alone, was willing to finance a pipeline.
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