The 2013 natural gas year in review

In an economic and geopolitical climate still unstable, the world gas expansion moderated for the second consecutive year, according to the first estimates for 2013 released by the International Association CEDIGAZ today.

Natural gas consumption only rose by 1.3%, down from an average growth of 2.8% per year in the previous decade. Natural gas still suffers in particular from severe competition with coal in the power generation sector. Inside the EU-28, actual consumption was estimated down 1.9% to 460 billion m³. This poor performance brought European consumption to levels not seen in more than 15 years. In the US, rising gas prices compared to 2012 has often made coal more competitive and penalised gas consumption in the power generation sector, causing it to fall by 10.5%.

Global growth in natural gas has been increasingly constrained by supply. In 2013, the growth in gas production slowed substantially to 0.8%, bringing the total volume to 3377 billion m³. As before, the gas supply shortfall was due to the decline of mature and conventional fields, and an insufficient renewal of reserves. The lack of upstream investment is especially acute in emerging markets, due to a lack of a favourable regulatory and fiscal climate.

The moderation of natural gas supply and investment has also been increasingly driven by geopolitical challenges. Deterioration of security, internal conflicts and resulting damage to infrastructures have caused some production outages and supply disruptions in some countries. In 2013, marketed production fell especially heavily in Africa (Algeria, Nigeria, Libya and Egypt). With the exception of Europe, other regions posted positive production gains. The largest of them were recorded in the CIS (+ 2.7%) and the Middle East (+ 3.4%).

International gas trade increased significantly by 2.1% to 1048 billion m³, due to the growing dependence of consumer markets on increasingly distant production sources, sometimes located in economically and politically unstable areas. The rise in the international gas trade was only driven by inter-regional pipeline gas exports from the CIS to Europe (+ 15%) and China (+ 36%). Geopolitical risks are having an ever-growing importance on the international gas scene, as demonstrated by the current Ukraine crisis.

In a nutshell, 2013 was a year that presented the challenges faced in developing new supply to meet growing gas demand, especially in emerging markets.

Adapted from a press release by David Bizley

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