Gas Reigns As Green Agenda Looms

While demand for oil will peak in 2023, demand for gas will continue increasing through 2034 as the world becomes increasingly electrified, DNV GL said in a forecast of world energy supply and demand out to 2050.

As a result, global gas capital spending will grow from $960 billion in 2015 to a peak of $1.3 trillion in 2025, while operational spending will rise by 30% between 2015 and 2040, according to DNV GL’s 2018 Energy Transition Outlook.

Other trends the outlook predicts include North America continuing to dominate unconventional gas production and seaborne gas trade from North America to China trebling by 2050.

Conventional onshore and offshore gas production is expected to decline from about 2030, while unconventional onshore gas is expected to rise to a peak in 2040, according to the outlook, leading to a growth in leaner and shorter life-span gas developments.

“It’s important for the oil and gas industry to work on efficiency and also competitiveness and for gas to take over from oil it has to be cheaper,” said Liz Hovem, CEO of DNV GL-Oil & Gas. “To be cheaper, it has to be produced in a cost-effective way.”