By E. Gurkan Abay
ANKARA
Global gas supply is expected to increase by 100 billion cubic meters annually, reaching to nearly 4 trillion cubic meters by 2019, according to the International Energy Agency.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Southeast Asia and Australia will be the fastest-growing producing region, as gas output is predicted to grow 121 percent until 2019. Australia holds the regions biggest reserve with 3.8 billion cubic meters of gas, while China is second with 3.1 billion cubic meters.
As the holder of world's 40 percent of natural gas, Middle East is another region where gas production continues to grow, the IEA says, adding that this growth will not be enough to meet additional demand.
On the other hand, Europe will be the only region where gas production is likely to drop, despite some hopes that shale gas production in the United Kingdom and Poland would reverse this trend. The report underlines that Europe’s gas production drop means that the region becomes even more import dependent on energy.
Shale gas is a type of a natural gas found trapped within shale formations and has become an increasingly important source of energy worldwide. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Poland’s shale gas reserves are the largest in Europe, with a potential 4.1 trillion cubic meters. Keen to make use of this potential, Poland enacted a law in March 11, which exempts taxes on shale gas exploitation until 2020.
Meanwhile, the shale basins of North of England and Scotland, which include the Bowland Basin, are estimated to have 7 trillion cubic meters of recoverable shale gas, according to EIA.
IEA also indicates that Russia is no longer expected to be among the largest providers of additional gas supply that is created worldwide. “Russia’s production will be constrained by sluggish European gas demand and by the absence of additional infrastructure to deliver pipeline gas to Asia or liquefied natural gas (LNG) to global gas markets,” IEA said.
Meanwhile, countries in Africa and Latin America do show a relatively strong growth in gas production. Although IEA does underline that many key producers, such as Algeria, Argentina, Egypt, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Venezuela struggle to increase their production. Emphasizing that these key producers face problems that find roots in the policies of these producers, which include low domestic gas prices compared to fields’ development costs, discouraging fiscal terms, unpaid bills, political uncertainty and priority given to the domestic market versus exports.
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