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Modelling world natural gas production

  • Jianliang Wang
    ,
  • Yongmei Bentley
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

As the cleanest fossil fuel in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, natural gas demand is expected to increase rapidly in future due to its important role in the transition of the world energy system. In this case, understanding potential limits to future production of the world’s natural gas resources becomes increasingly important. This paper uses a modified multi-cycle generalized Weng model to forecast the long-term production of natural gas by region, and also globally. Both conventional and unconventional gas production are considered. Our results show that world natural gas production is likely to peak in the range 3.7 to 6.1 trillion cubic meters per year (tcm/y) between 2019 and 2060 depending on assumptions made on the size of the global ultimately recoverable resource (URR) of natural gas. A comparison of this paper’s forecasts with those from the scientific literature and from major energy institutes shows that the projection in this paper’s ‘high scenario’ can be seen as a likely upper-bound on future global natural gas production. To turn this upper-bound projection into reality, great efforts will be needed from the gas industry to discover more conventional and unconventional gas resources, and to make these recoverable.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 1363-1372

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Energy Reports (Volume 6)

Publication milestones

  • Accepted/In press - 20/05/2020
  • Published - 23/05/2020

Publication status

Published - 23/05/2020

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/623991
  • Scopus: 85084938642

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