gas stocks may lose steam , page-2

Minerva

World population is currently around 6.8 billion.

USA, Western Europe incl Scandinavia, Japan, Canada and Australia as the major developed economies account for just 0.92 billion (13.5% of world population).

China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh account for about 2.84 billion (42% of world population).

The peoples of China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh per capita consume typically less than 1/10th the energy of the peoples of USA, Western Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia.

The economies of China and India are industrialising and growing at a cracking pace. The economies of USA, Western Europe, Japan, Canada are essentially in recession. Industrialisation of China and India is likely to be an ongoing trend for the next half century or more.

If say just 50% of the populations of China and India (2.5 billion or 37% of world population) increase energy consumption to say 70% of the current developed economies progressively over the next 50 years and current developed economies stagnate (energy consumptionwise) the world will be consuming 9.5 times (or 950%) its current energy consumption without further population growth (which is unrealistic).

Currently any annual increase in world oil production is measured at something like 2%-4% and peak oil isn't too far away. So oil is unlikely to provide anything remotely approaching the energy demand increase to support the industrialisation of just China and India.

Coal could and probably will contribute significantly to rising world energy demand despite the best of intentions expressed at Kyoto and recently Copenhagen.

Natural gas (conventional hydrocarbon, coal seam and even ucg syngas) can and will provide a very significant proportion of rising world energy demand at a very handy 25-40% reduction of CO2 emmissions.

The gas will be used for electricity generation, fuelling private and public motorised transport and for conversion to liquid fuels like diesel and avgas, fertilisers and a range of petrochemical products.

Conventional logic with a ramp up of gas production from the NW Shelf and 5 competing coal seam gas consortia developing LNG export from Nth Qld and ESG possibly considering LNG from Newcastle would be at least a short term weakness in pricing power.

But most big gas supply contracts are written to cover at least a couple of decades and I am sure the gas importers are aware of long term supply security issues.

Against the backdrop I describe in this post, I doubt there can be any serious gas glut in the near, mid and longer term future.

Cheers
Dex