The latest annual survey of the global gas industry, 2011’s Natural Gas in the World published by the international association Cedigaz in December, provides a detailed description of the recent evolution in the world’s gas markets.
The study focuses on the new dynamics in the global gas industry and emerging regional gas market patterns.
Cedigaz’s survey, which predicts a 3% growth in world gas production in 2011, confirms the overall long-term upward trend in gas expansion worldwide. But this overall situation masks highly contrasting regional developments. World gas supply adapts to the dynamism of some markets (Asia in particular) and to the economic and climatic conditions of others, such as Europe, where consumption is down an estimated 9% in 2011.
In the short term, rapid growth is forecast in gas demand and an even faster expansion is expected in international trade. Moreover, both longstanding and new factors favour growth in production. The continued expansion and concentration of conventional reserves in the CIS and the Middle East has enabled these two regions to reinforce their role in world gas supply. The development of unconventional gas has been accelerating, while conversely production of conventional gas has seen a deeper decline in many mature basins in the world.
World gas markets are increasingly driven by China and the Middle East. According to Cedigaz, China will double its current level of consumption by 2015.
Spurred by new technological and commercial opportunities, the LNG industry has entered a new growth phase in recent years. It is projected that 26 new liquefaction projects will increase global capacity by 60% by 2020. The world LNG trade is poised for rapid expansion in the short term, and is estimated to have climbed by 10% in 2011, partly due to the electricity shortages in Japan following the Fukushima accident. As a result, the LNG glut has been dissipated.
Finally, the growth of the Asian market and the unconventional gas boom in North America point to the maintenance of large regional price differentials, encouraging LNG export projects in the US and Canada, which, according to Cedigaz, will account for a limited 4% share of the global LNG trade by 2020.
Cedigaz is an association dedicated to natural gas information, created in 1961 by gas companies and the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFPEN). It is based near Paris.
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LNG World News Staff, January 12, 2012; Image: Tokyo Gas