It is just gas!
You really have to hurry if you want to win the competition on catching the most natural gas. At EnergyLab, the gas will be blowing up from the ground and your tasks is to try to catch as much of it as possible. You are able to see where the gas comes up the next time because of the light in the floor. Then you just have to be faster than your friends to catch it. Quit shoving!
This is just a game of course, since the natural gas from a real gas drilling is intercepted by a fixed piping system that goes right down the bore. The piping system leads the gas to a gas treatment plant, where the gas gets cleaned and prepared for use. In Denmark the gas gets distributed to households, factories and power plants through a wide branched piping system – the Danish natural gas net. Most of the gas will be burned for heating up houses and making hot water.
Natural gas contains a lot of energy just like oil and coal. The energy is bound in hydrocarbons; they are chemical compounds of carbon and hydrogen. A very high proportion of natural gas is for example methane, which consist of 1 part carbon and 4 parts hydrogen. When we burn gas in order to extract the energy, the carbon is converted into carbon dioxide, CO2, while the hydrogen is converted to water, H2O.
About 50% of the energy in natural gas comes from carbon. In oil it is about 65% of the energy, and in mineral coal it is about 88% of the energy that comes from carbon. To produce a given quantity of energy, natural gas gives the lowest emission of carbon dioxide, or CO2, oil is in the middle, and coal provides most CO2.