BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept.2
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Europe is the region that will experience the most dramatic reduction in production, falling by 58 percent from now through to 2050, Trend reports with reference to the Norway-based DNV GL company.
The future position of natural gas in Europe’s fuel mix beyond the 2040-2050 period (for example for the production of blue hydrogen) will be linked with the large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage technology. One of the reasons of the dramatic fall in European gas output is the expected suspension by Netherlands of production at Groningen, Europe’s largest onshore natural gas field, by 2022, eight years earlier than initially planned.
DNV GL notes that in terms of absolute output, the three dominant players at present, North East Eurasia, North America, and the Middle East and North Africa, will maintain their current levels of production throughout the forecast period.
“As there will be large regional shifts in demand, LNG and pipeline transport will experience larger changes than changes in production. Gas transport is expensive and accounts for a significant proportion of the cost of delivered energy. Although piping is cheaper than shipping for transport over shorter distances, and will expand as production sites and consumption sites move steadily further apart, shipping will increase its share of inter-regional gas transport. Transport costs will continue to rise, as both transformation of gas-to-liquid forms (liquefaction) and on-keel transport, in the forms of LNG and LPG, will increase,” the company said in its latest report.
The company points out that most importing regions increase their imports, and, consequently, exporting regions will export more, resulting in the global capacity for regasification more than doubling by 2050, while the global capacity for liquefaction more than triples.
“North America will see the largest growth in liquefaction, accounting for 44 percent of global capacity by 2050. Middle East and North Africa will be second largest, representing about 17 percent of global liquefaction capacity. By mid-century, nearly half (47 percent) of the global regasification capacity will be in the Indian Subcontinent and Greater China. As gas fields are depleted, especially the unconventional ones, production capacity will need to expand.”
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