I have old leases on my ranch that give us free gas for use in heating a rather large chicken-raising outfit.
1. Gas does vary, even from the same well. It also has no smell, except H2S, which, if you smell (rotten eggs), run the f—k away because you are about to die.
2. You will inevitably get liquids and solids in the process. The liquids are things like propane, natural gasoline, etc, and have value, but pretty much just need to be added to the tank battery because you won’t be able to market them, and the oil company can. They also blow up and clog crap up.
3. Recently, at least where our ranch is, the state has all-but outlawed free gas and you have to meter it and pay severance taxes on it and a whole host of crap that would make a new installation questionable, at best.
4. I am a fan of liquified natural gas, in general, especially in fleet vehicles. It’s cheaper and you can often dodge upwards of a $1/gallon of tax on it. We use it in certain of our big rigs (I own a drilling company and service company). They pretty much drive in a loop and come back to the yard to be re-filled. This works very well and when diesel was so high, I was saving $2,50/g — and now it’s $1.50, but still worth it.
For an individual vehicle? Probably not.
You can smell H2S up to a point, then you lose the ability to detect it. Tough on any carbon steel piping system as well.
http://www.safetydirectory.com/hazardous_substances/hydrogen_sulfide/fact_sheet.htm
Hydrogen sulfide has a very low odor threshold, with its smell being easily perceptible at concentrations well below 1 part per million (ppm) in air. The odor increases as the gas becomes more concentrated, with the strong rotten egg smell recognisable up to 30 ppm. Above this level, the gas is reported to have a sickeningly sweet odor up to around 100 ppm. However, at concentrations above 100 ppm, a person’s ability to detect the gas is affected by rapid temporary paralysis of the olfactory nerves in the nose, leading to a loss of the sense of smell. This means that the gas can be present at dangerously high concentrations, with no perceivable odor.