Economic Analysis On Different Modes Of Natural Gas Transportation

With the rapid development of economy and society, people pay more and more attention to the problems of resources and environment. China’s primary energy supply is still dominated by coal, but the ratio of other primary energy increased gradually, especially natural gas. At the present, situation of natural gas’ s supply has undergone great changes, the pipeline construction is carried on in full speed, nationwide network of gas pipeline is formed gradually; LNG import business develops rapidly too, the total number of LNG receiving terminal which have been constructed, which are under construction and which have been planned to be constructed has reached 29. In order to choose the best mode of transportation, we must conduct economic analysis of different modes of natural gas transportation.In this thesis, economical analysis of natural gas pipeline transportation, LNG road tanker transportation, LNG ship transportation and CNG road tanker transportation are conducted. When conduct the economic analysis, two cases of gas source are taken into consideration, one is that gas is from nature gas distribution station, one is that gas is from LNG receiving terminal. The analysis of pipeline transportation is divided into two situations: one has compressor stations, and one doesn’t. As to the first situation, spacing of the adjacent stations is one of the most important parameters, so optimization analysis of the spacing is conducted, and the best station spacing of different transportation scale is figured out. When analyze LNG inland water transportation, two kinds of ship are taken into consideration, one kind is small LNG carrier, the other kind is tank container ship. Through the comparison, found that the mode of small LNG carrier transportation is very expensive, it’s unit transportation cost will be lower than tank container ship transportation just under great scale. So, when compared with other transportation modes, tank container ship transportation is selected.After setting up empirical formulas of different transportation modes’ unit cost, different modes of natural gas transportation are compared. The comparisons are divided into two groups according to the difference of gas source and transport distance. In the first group, PNG, LNG and CNG road transport are compared, this group is targeted for small transportation scale, short transportation distance and that gas source is from distribution station. In the second group, PNG, LNG road transport and LNG ship transport are compared, this group is targeted for large transportation scale, long transportation distance and that gas source is from LNG receiving terminal. Through the comparison, economical transportation scopes of different transportation modes are figured out. At last, economical transportation scopes are combined with economical transportation scale, and profitable transportation scopes of different natural gas transportation modes are figured out.