Recent Trends in the World Gas Market: Economical, Geopolitical and Environmental Aspects

Abstract

Natural gas is considered by energy experts to be the most promising fossil fuel for the 21st century, and as a matter of fact, the International Energy Agency (IEA) introduced for the first time in the 2011 World Energy Outlook a high gas use scenario called the "Golden Age of Gas". Natural gas is an easy to burn and clean fuel; its proven reserves are large and furthermore, enormous possibilities are offered by unconventional resources. There are anyway some geopolitical concerns in the global gas market, since the most important reserves are concentrated in a limited number of countries; the environmental impacts in the extraction of shale gas should also be taken into account. The paper presents an updated and thorough overview of recent advances and trends in the global gas market, highlighting the role of Europe in the World scenario. Statistical data from the main international reports are presented; economical, geopolitical and especially environmental aspects are presented and discussed.

Production Patterns of Eagle Ford Shale Gas: Decline Curve Analysis Using 1084 Wells

“…The aim The rise of the unconventional gas supply is going to influence the natural gas world market and international trade in the following years and reduce dependence on the traditional biggest producers such as Russia, the Middle East, and North African countries [8]. Shale gas, perceived as one of the largest sources of natural gas in the future [9], has a remarkable opportunity to become a more important part of the global energy mix.…”

A Note on Medium- and Long-Term Global Energy Prospects and Scenarios

“…Moreover, significant care must be taken in order to avoid that these materials contaminate surface water and soil. However, the unconventional resources production is expected to significantly increase and, starting from 2020, the unconventional resources are estimated to become dominant compared to the conventional ones [35,36]. The share of unconventional gas is projected to increase by an average annual growth rate of 3.5% in the period 2014-2040.…”

The US Shale Gas Revolution and Its Externality on Crude Oil Prices: A Counterfactual Analysis

“…Erdős [27] find that the US gas price has decoupled from crude oil price after shale gas expansion due to the oversupply from US shale gas output. In power generation, coal fired power is being displaced by the rise in the availability of shale gas [1]. Melikoglu [28] analyzes the role of shale gas in the global energy market, and concludes that it will have an increased share of natural gas in energy mix and probably lead to the decline in natural gas price.…”

“…The objective of the structural VAR analysis is to propose economic restrictions to infer these structural relations from consistent estimation of C(L) and Σ. Therefore, what is of interest to our analysis is the set of structural relations leading to Equation (1). Assuming that A 0 has a structure which could make the reduced-form errors e t be decomposed as:…”

“…Over the past several years, unconventional gas has gained centre stage in the global energy market, which is mainly driven by rapid development in the US shale gas production [1]. Previously, the viability of shale gas was regarded as either non-feasible or uneconomical due to technological limitations and low gas price.…”