The Oil Drum: Canada | A Mackenzie Valley Pipe-Dream?

15 comments on A Mackenzie Valley Pipe-Dream?

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John McFadden on December 11, 2006 - 5:41am

The idea of using giant airships in the north of Canada has been around for a long time.

I could see them being very useful in building the pipeline, but I have trouble envisioning LNG floating slowly through the air getting past aviation security people in Canada, let alone the Caspian region.

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Oil Watcher Named Ed on December 11, 2006 - 9:41am

We don't want to get around the security people. We need the security people to ensure that that no crazed individual or terrorist with SAM tries to shoot our cargo down.

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tom deplume on December 11, 2006 - 2:11pm

Giant airships to transport nat gas would not involve liquifaction. Nat gas is roughly half as dense as air so it would act as the lifting gas of huge blimps. The blimps would be filled at the artic gas field, flown south using a protion of the gas as fuel, then deflated at a southern pipeline terminal. The deflated blimps would return to the gas field by ship or plane to repeat the cycle.

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Oil Watcher Named Ed on December 15, 2006 - 10:51am

But the surface area displace would be huge. If not pressurized or liquified, you have problems with push a surface area like that through the air. You need power to push that area, and you have a static charges building up. So there are two problems to deal with.

H2 is still 7 times as lighter. Than methane and will provide much less surface area.

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