Natural gas, when produced and used domestically, is shipped in its vapour form through a network of distribution pipelines to a local distribution company and then delivered to a customer. When natural gas is shipped to a distant foreign market outside of where it is produced, the natural gas needs to ‘shrink in size’ or be compressed in order to ship large volumes economically – this liquefies the natural gas (LNG). The ‘shrinking’ of natural gas reduces its volume by a factor of about 600.