Is it true that 20 LNG plants have been burned recently in the United States?

In January 2023, there were reports on the Internet that in America over the past few months under mysterious circumstances, about two dozen enterprises were destroyed, where liquefied natural gas (LNG) produce. We checked the reliability of such publications.

At the very end of January, numerous Telegram channels reported that “over the past few months under mysterious circumstances”, 20 LNG plants burned down in the United States. In total, such channels, judging by the TGSTAT service, were more than 300, among the largest of them - "Truthfulness"(1.49 million subscribers at the time of writing this analysis),"Russia now"(1.37 million)," "🔥 Army 🅉 18+ 🔥"(1.05 million)," "Bullet"(877 000),"I am in the know"(578 000),"Warming"(572 000),"Polish people 🅉"(523 000),"Urgent news!"(494 000),"Sheikh Tamir"(411 000),"⚡️🇷🇺 Summarians of the militia of Novorossiya Z.O.V. (DPR, LPR, Ukraine, war)"(291 000),"Reporter Rudenko v🇷🇺"(277 000) and"Yakov Kedmi"(194,000). Similar publications appeared at the same time in Facebook, Twitter, "VKontakte" YouTube, Livejournal and on other platforms.

Similar in content posts began to appear in Russian -speaking social networks since July 2022. Then, however, they spoke not about 20, but about 18 factories-dedicated to “mysterious” fires at American enterprises, a video on the YouTube channel “The course of thoughts” Collected More than 1 million views. Publications on this topic also came to popular blog platforms like "Zena" And forums.

The vast majority of January publications, which talked about mass fires at American gas plants, used a 13-second video removed from the air as evidence. The video shows how a certain large object burns in the middle of residential development. This is really a plant, but not for the production of LNG, but for processing cardboard. It is located on the outskirts of San Diego, and shortly before the appearance of viral posts in the Telegram channels, Mexican media Used In the news about this event fast Twitter users, who managed to shoot a fire while landing at the airport of the Border City of Tihuan.

Even if the video is not on the LNG production plant, but no other evidence in Telegram channels is given, can a statement about 20 burned enterprises be true? Let's check how many LNG plants in the USA are generally. On the website of the Energy Information Agency of the US Department of Energy Available A table with a listing of all industrial and industrial plants under construction and under construction. According to these data, there are only seven of them in the United States, and the seventh was launched in December 2022. If you count the factories, but the production lines on them, then it is scored 26 by December and 44 after December 2022 (two out of seven plants were built using a large number of low -tonnage units, on one of them there are 18 such devices, on the other - 10).

Judging by graphics LNG exports from the United States from the same government site, in the summer there was approximately 15 percent drop in LNG export (and the vast majority of LNG volumes is exported). Given what gas prices were during this period (three times higherthan a year before), such a reduction most likely occurred due to the impossibility of supplying. Indeed, on June 8 at the largest American factory Freeport LNG It happened fire, reduced The working capacity of the American LNG industry is 17%. Since we see on the schedule of shipments, there have been no significant reductions, from which we can conclude that there were no problems, especially explosions or fires, have not been at the rest of the working American LNG plants.

Typically, Internet users telling about the "epidemic" of fires in American factories do not call a single specific injured enterprise. A rare exception is the publications of a half -year statute of limitations (including in the government "Russian newspaper"), Where they talked about a fire in Oklahom. In the table of the US Department of Energy, the LNG production plant in the city of Medford does not appear, but the production that is mentioned in this news exists and there is a fire on it really was In July 2022.

The fact is (and this is a fairly common confusion) that follows distinguish Two different substances, called English LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) and LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas). The first is methane (CH₄), the gas that comes from the main pipelines is used at power plants, is extracted from the Yamal deposits and until recently was sold to Europe with tens of billions of cubic meters. For liquefaction, methane must be cooled to a temperature of –160 ° C. It is produced by tens of millions of tons at those very seven factories. And the second, LPG, is a chemically different substance, a mixture of propane (with₃H₈) and Butana (C₄H₁₀). It, as a rule, is extracted as a composition of associated gas emerging from the ground along with oil. To turn it into a liquid, LPG must be compressed by several atmospheres at room temperature. This is a gas that happens in gas lighters, cylinders for tourist burners and for summer cottages. In Russian, this mixture is called “liquefied hydrocarbon gases” (LPG).

The release of such gas is a standard operation in the preparation of oil, gas and condensate for further transportation, and installation for this is in many points, such factories in the United States about 500. These are rather explosive gases - with a leakage of methane, which is lighter than air, it goes into the atmosphere, and heavier propane and butane stand by the ground until they accumulate enough to ignite from a random sparks, so fires at such plants are quite frequent. In Oklahom, just such a plant burned out.

Thus, viral publications about 20 recently in the United States in the LNG production plants are not only not confirmed by any authoritative sources, but in principle cannot be true - in the United States there are only seven such enterprises. In the January publications on this subject, a video was used as “evidence”, which captured a fire in the production of cardboard processing, rather than gas liquefaction. In earlier messages, it was a question of production factories not LNG, but a LPG - there are about 500 such enterprises in the United States, and fires really occur from them.

Photo on the cover: Pixabay

Not true

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