I read on a Ron Paul forum website that Ron Paul has a clip out on Youtube that claims “One billion cubic feet every 24 hours natural gas that comes up with oil daily on north slope-enough for 200 years in America. Using 48 747 boeing engines to pump back into the ground.” (hatchet job on the grammar from the Ron Paul forum site)
I think they’re referring to the storage of natural gas in underground salt domes. Once the domes are mined out, natural gas can be stored in them. More info.
I believe it is specifically referring to associated gas re injection for reservoir pressure maintenance rather than gas storage.
In many oil reservoirs there is a gas cap above the oil (and often a water section below the oil) and there is also a lot of gas dissolved in the oil.
When the oil is produced up a well, often a substantial amount of gas comes with the oil (associated gas). Something needs to be done with this gas. In the past it was often flared off. These days that practice is either banned or strongly frowned upon. Often the gas is re compressed (hence the reference to giant compressors) and re injected back into the reservoir to maintain reservoir pressure to ensure the oil keeps flowing.
It should be noted that if you take the gas and sell it rather than use it to maintain reservoir pressure your oil production will decrease. There may be some middle ground where all the gas is not required for reinjection and pressure maintenance and some can be exported. How ever the estimated reserves of between 10 to 17 TCF of associated gas (ie gas associated with oil production) is not sufficient to make a pipeline economically viable, with out additional gas reserves being produced.
Note - water injection is often used to maintain reservoir pressures, however simply changing over from gas injection to water injection is not always feasible depending on the reservoir, and it would require the drilling (ie huge cost) of new wells.
For a cite
From a Minerals Management service report from 2001
http://www.mms.gov/alaska/re/natgas/akngases.htm
[QOUTE=MMS] In 1999, gross gas production from the North Slope oil fields was 3.15 tcf (8.63 bcfpd) of which 93 percent was re-injected.
[/QUOTE]
US consumption today is about 63 bcfd, so if North Slope associated gas production, based on oil production rates, has not changed significantly, would supply about 14% of the US daily supply. Quite how they managed to calculate 200 years worth of supply based on a daily production number is a mystery. To determine how long it would last you need to consider the reserves. As mentioned in the previous post it is estimated at 16Tcf. So based on 3 Tcf per year that would be about 5 and a bit years worth of producing all the associated gas to supply the US market.
(numbers from the EIA)
Now there are significant gas reserves else where in the North slope and Alaska which could boost US domestic natural gas consumption, but the associated gas that is being reinjected would not help the US natural gas situation significantly.
I’m not sure what the current situation is, but there has certainly been serious talk of a gas pipe from Alaska. Last I heard, the proposed pipe would be the biggest gas pipe in the world (in diameter; 5’+) and the total steel order would be the largest of any project in world history. I forget how much gas it would take to fill (gas pipes are always full) but it was a jaw dropping amount.