Text “Natural gas”.

Natural gas is a gas consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons (primarily ethane). It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers. Most natural gas is created by two mechanisms: biogenic and thermogenic. Biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at greater temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, it must undergo processing to remove almost all materials other than methane. The by-products of that processing include ethane, propane, butanes, pentanes, and higher molecular weight hydrocarbons, elemental sulfur, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and sometimes helium and nitrogen. Natural gas is often informally referred to as simply gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal.

In the 19th century, natural gas was usually obtained as a byproduct of producing oil, since the small, light gas carbon chains came out of solution as the extracted fluids underwent pressure reduction from the reservoir to the surface, similar to uncapping a bottle of soda pop where the carbon dioxide effervesces. Unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields. If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was virtually valueless since it had to be piped to the end user. In the 19th century and early 20th century, such unwanted gas usually was burned off in the oil fields. Today, unwanted gas (or 'stranded' gas without a market) associated with oil extraction often is returned to the reservoir with 'injection' wells while awaiting a possible future market or to repressurize the formation, which can enhance extraction rates from other wells. Another solution is to export the natural gas as a liquid. Gas-to-liquids (GTL) is a developing technology that converts stranded natural gas into synthetic gasoline, diesel or jet fuel through the Fischer-Tropsch process developed in World War II Germany. Such fuel can be transported to users through conventional pipelines and tankers. Proponents claim GTL burns cleaner than comparable petroleum fuels.

Natural gas can be "associated" (found in oil fields) or "non-associated" (isolated in natural gas fields), and is also found in coal beds (as coalbed methane). It sometimes contains significant amounts of ethane, propane, butane, and pentane – heavier hydrocarbons removed for commercial use prior to the methane being sold as a consumer fuel or chemical plant feedstock. Non-hydrocarbons such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, helium (rarely), and hydrogen sulfide must be removed also before the natural gas can be transported. Natural gas is commercially extracted from oil fields and natural gas fields. Gas extracted from oil wells is called casinghead gas or associated gas. The natural gas industry is extracting gas from increasingly more challenging resource types: sour gas, tight gas, shale gas, and coalbed methane.

Because natural gas is not a pure product, as the reservoir pressure drops when non-associated gas is extracted from a field under supercritical (pressure/temperature) conditions, the higher molecular weight components may partially condense upon isothermic depressurizing—an effect called retrograde condensation. The liquid thus formed may get trapped as the pores of the gas reservoir get deposited. One method to deal with this problem is to re-inject dried gas free of condensate to maintain the underground pressure and to allow re-evaporation and extraction of condensates. More frequently, the liquid condenses at the surface, and this is one of the uses of the gas plant to collect this condensate. The resulting liquid is called natural gas liquid (NGL) and has a good commercial value.