Shell Sees Global NatGas Demand Rising 3% a Year Over Next 15 Years

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Royal Dutch Shell expects the global demand for natural gas to increase about 3 pct annually over the next 15 years as consumers clamour for cleaner and more environmentally friendly fuel.

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At least 2 trln usd will have to be invested over the next 20 years to achieve that growth, "a real challenge even for an industry accustomed to doing the impossible," she told a conference of the Society of Petroleum Engineers in Texas on Monday.

And there's no shortage of resources to tap, she said, citing a US Geological Survey data showing that there is still more than 13,000 trln cubic feet of discovered and undiscovered gas.

"We could debate this figure, but undoubtedly, theres much more gas to find and develop. The challenge for all of us is to maximise recovery from existing resources and lower the cost of developing new ones, conventional and unconventional," Cook added.

RigZone

[NNadir]

1. Somehow I think the demand for gas will be coupled to its price.

Natural gas is very expensive to ship without pipeline supplies. There is a whole lot of NIMBY going on with respect to terminals.

Recently we've seen that gas supplies are very much subject to supply disruptions.

In my lifetime, most of the predictions people have made about energy have proved dubious. If it were not so, people wouldn't be talking about "shocks" all of the time.

Certainly the demand for gas in my house will be going down this winter.

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2. True, you must consider the source here.

But the dependency we have on hydrocarbon energy will
not be broken quickly, nor will the political will for the
necessary change easy to find.

That said, I am doing what I can for "demand destruction" too.
Thermal clothes are very effective and surprisingly cheap.

[philb]

3. Similar projections for coal use; and gasoline use,etc. but they aren't

paying attention to what's going on in the world. The problem with
most countries plans and projections for more energy use is that the use of fossil fuels is already too high, and its clear the world has to drastically reduce use of fossil fuels- not increase them.
Global warming and worldwide mercury pollution from use of fossil fuels is having huge and rapidly increasing effects. The environmental effects and environmental costs are much higher than the production cost- so production costs are not the driving factor in future solutions. Energy efficiency and alternatives are the only options that make sense. The public should insist that policy makers make decisions considering total cost, generation, distribution, and environmnetal costs, as economics teaches but policy makers currently forget. The economy and lifestyles can be in many ways better, as there are virtually unlimited cost effective energy efficiency and alternative options. We just need to be smarter in the way we do things.
http://www.flcv.com/flenergy.html

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4. I expect coal will be used to fill the gap as NG and petroleum get costly.

In fact that's what China is doing now.

FWIW, I think it's too late about the climate, and even if it
was not, the chance of the political will being found to do
something effective about it is near zero. It's going to be a
wild ride. I almost want to stick around to watch.