China's natural gas demand to exceed supply by over one-third in 2011

[phantom power]

China's demand for natural gas will exceed its supply by 35 percent in 2011, Yin Jianping, a professor at the School of Business Administration under the China University of Petroleum, said at the first China Energy Forum jointly held recently by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the National Energy Administration.

Yin said that China's demand for natural gas will maintain rapid growth in the coming decade, and its annual consumption will exceed 150 billion cubic meters by 2015 and 200 billion cubic meters by 2018. The country's demand for natural gas has outstripped its supply since 2008. It is estimated that China's energy supply-demand gap will increase from 38 billion cubic meters in 2015 to 110 billion cubic meters in 2021, and the natural gas supply-demand gap will grow accordingly based on forecasts of the gas supply and demand.

Huang Hui, an expert from the Research and Development Center of the CNOOC Gas and Power Group, said that lack of supply is the root cause of the huge gap, but given the enormous natural gas resources, China still has great potential for the exploration and development of natural gas.

Huang said that according to the third national oil and gas assessment, China has 53 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, with the estimated recoverable reserves amounting to 14 trillion cubic meters. Furthermore, China is also very rich in unconventional natural gas, including nearly 27.4 trillion cubic meters of coal-bed gas, and the natural gas hydrates in the South China Sea alone are equivalent to 700 billion tons of oil.

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90778/90862/7206796.html