August 31, 2006: Natural gas thief

I had seen this several times out there, but I thought it wasn't all that interesting. But I never knew what it was, exactly. We've had a lot of images of people with outrageous cargo. But not this kind. A lurker (thanks Tracy!) pointed to the original news item which tells us: this kid is stealing natural gas.

Speeding from the scene of the crime, a Chinese boy tows a floating plastic bag of stolen natural gas last week. Flouting a government ban, farmers around the central Chinese town of Pucheng frequently filch gas from the local oil field.

I'd seen this one before too, but it's still cool.

Stealing natural gas this way seems so much better than those Nigerians(?) who were scooping up gasoline with bowls from a sabotaged pipeline.

Is it just me, or is that kid wearing an old-fashioned, "Flintsones-style" caveman outfit ???

I wonder how much natural gas that is? It's not compressed. It that enough to run a burner on a gas stove for 5 minutes? Or is it a month's supply? I have no concept of scale for this one.

The unit of measure is "how big the fireball would be if you melted through the bag with a can of hairspray and a lighter."

How come it looks like that bag has feet under it?

It's a giant termite with a taste for young Asian boys on tricycles.

his mom is probably waiting to cook the families pot of morning noodle soup.

great job!

sproglet wrote:

It's a giant termite with a taste for young Asian boys on tricycles.

Or...it's a deformed one of those things from The Prisoner.

Shawnee123 wrote:

How come it looks like that bag has feet under it?

I was wondering about that as well.

Flint wrote:

Or...it's a deformed one of those things from The Prisoner.

That just looks like a big old ping pong ball.

How do you know it was stolen natural gas? Maybe he just found it.

Maybe he produced it...don't they eat a lot of legume type foods?

There is like, a tube, or somthing, there . . . hmmmmmm

Flint wrote:

Or...it's a deformed one of those things from The Prisoner.

His name was "Rover", for obvious reasons.

Flint wrote:

There is like, a tube, or somthing, there . . . hmmmmmm

That's the Internet. It's a series of tubes.

Right, it's not a big truck.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned before, the guy at Westinghouse that filled balloons for his kid's birthday party, with acetylene. Stuffed them in two big trash bags and headed for the gate.

They couldn't fire him for theft, because there was no evidence. But he did lose most of his clothing...... in the explosion. :crazy:

According to Reader's Digest, "A full-size gas grill (35,000 Btu) will cook for 30 minutes per pound of propane."

According to Wikipedia, propane masses 1.83 kg/m3, or about two pounds per cubic meter.

Say the bag in the picture has between 3 and 8 cubic meters of gas - let's say five. Then it's 10 pounds of gas, or half of a standard 20lb cylinder, or enough to cook on a (large, Western) gas grill for five hours. For a small stove, that's got to be weeks of cooking gas.

Note that natural gas is heavier than air, explaining the struts underneath.

Natural gas is methane, not propane, and lighter than air.

jaufrec wrote:

According to Reader's Digest, "A full-size gas grill (35,000 Btu) will cook for 30 minutes per pound of propane."

According to Wikipedia, propane masses 1.83 kg/m3, or about two pounds per cubic meter.

Say the bag in the picture has between 3 and 8 cubic meters of gas - let's say five. Then it's 10 pounds of gas, or half of a standard 20lb cylinder, or enough to cook on a (large, Western) gas grill for five hours. For a small stove, that's got to be weeks of cooking gas.

Note that natural gas is heavier than air, explaining the struts underneath.

Awesome, jaufrec. Even if this is natural gas, and not propane, that does give a sense of scale to it. Thanks!

In the original news link, I think you guys missed the more important story .. about the Mexican Sewer diver ..:eek: .. now in THERE, would be a methane supply, that a Chinaman could go ga-ga over .. :greenface :greenface

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060901-sewer-video.html

I surprised how clear that sewage is, shooting film under water.:eek: