On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 18:38:32 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On 13 Jun 2015 01:08:44 -0300, Mike Spencer
wrote:


John B. writes:

Hydro-carbon gas is a many slandered substance, but when you talk
about "pipe line" gas it is usually mostly Ethane and Methane. In
Indonesia they use "gas" to make fertilizer but I'm not sure whether
they are using strictly ethane-methane of something richer.

Since neither of those (nor other natural has) contains significant
amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium, there must be more to
the story than that one sentence reveals.

I'm not a chemist so I can't argue one way or the other. All I can say
is that I know of two "fertilizer plants" in Indonesia that made
fertilizer from natural gas. I seem to remember the "Habor, or maybe
Haber, process" being mentioned.
Haber

again from Wiki -

The 1910s and 1920s witness the rise of the Haber process and the
Ostwald process. The Haber process produces ammonia (NH3) from methane
(CH4) gas and molecular nitrogen (N2). The ammonia from the Haber
process is then converted into nitric acid (HNO3) in the Ostwald
process.[96] The development of synthetic fertilizer has significantly
supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost
half the people on the Earth are currently fed as a result of
synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use.[97]