ABSTRACT
Natural gas was first liquefied over a century ago to produce helium from the trace elements found in most natural gas fields. There were no uses, at that time, for the LNG, which was effectively a by-product of the helium process. By the 1930s, as natural gas became a significant fuel, liquefaction began to be used as a way of storing natural gas, taking advantage of the approximately one-six-hundredth reduction in volume that occurs when methane is turned into a liquid by cooling it to around –161 ºC.
