The Annoying Smell of Gas

[billroper]

I was out playing Pooh Kicks with Katie in the back yard when I noticed that the smell of natural gas was once again strong in our easement. NiCor hadn't been able to figure out where it was coming from when we'd called before, but I figured, what the heck! So I called again.

A nice man came out with his sniffer and (once again) agreed that there was gas. He, however, was clever enough to go check the houses behind ours.

Where there was no gas leak.

On the other side of the street from the houses behind us, there was a gas leak though.

He came back and complimented me on my excellent sense of smell. :)

And now, perhaps the problem can be fixed.

Comments

[dave-ifversen.livejournal.com]

I used to work summers (while in college) for the gas company back in Michigan. Spent lots of time in the storage field and compressor complex. There was a shed, smack in the middle of the compressor complex, that nobody ever went into if they could help it. That's where the stink was added to the gas. It didn't take much (you can smell individual molecules of the stuff - that's why they use it). Whenever anyone went into the shed, they came out smelling like natural gas - and the smell lingered for hours.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

He came back and complimented me on my excellent sense of smell. :)

You're in a minority. There are a lot of males that can't really smell this stuff.

[billroper]

I didn't realize that. Of course, I used to work in a sulfur lab. This may be why I think that eau de skunk in small quantities has a pleasant, minty fragrance. :)

The emphasis is on small quantities.

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing about this is that on my brother-in-law's farm up in Michigan's thumb, the natural gas seeps out of the ground naturally smelling of this same sulfur compound.

Once I realized this, it made sense that after they refine and purify the natural gas to deadly un-notice-ability, that this was the smell that they chose to put back in.

[dave-ifversen.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing about this is that on my brother-in-law's farm up in Michigan's thumb, the natural gas seeps out of the ground naturally smelling of this same sulfur compound.

Actually, that's not surprising. Most of the "producing" wells in Michigan are in the very upper part of the lower peninsula - many of the rest of the fields have been converted to "storage" fields. (They buy gas from Texas and other places in the summer, when it's cheap, and pump it into the ground. In the winter, they take it back out of the field and sell it. There are several major pipelines coming into Michigan from the south just for this purpose.) Any gas pumped into the field would have the odorant already in it, so if any seeped out of the field, it does not surprise me that it would smell like, well, gas. Some of the smell is lost over time once the gas is pumped back into the ground for storage, so they do need to add more when they pull it out (which is why we had that shed in the middle of the compressor plant yard...).