18-02-02 The senior partner of UK Denton Wilde Sapte Susan Farmer said that in the next two decades, gas consumption is predicted to increase at least three times than of oil consumption. Farmer told the conference on Middle East Energy Strategy that, in particular, the use of natural gas fuel for power generation is predicted to increase dramatically over the next decade.
She said its share of total power generation fuel supply could rise accordingly from about the same at 38 %. The advent over the past decade of Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) power generation technology, with its advantages of lower cost, shorter construction time, high efficiency and less pollution has been a strong driver for future expansion of the natural gas and LNG markets.

Major difficulties faced with the development of new gas consumption markets include the large amount of investment in infrastructure required to get the gas to market and lack of flexibility to switch between markets. Gas pipelines are expensive when then traverse long distance or difficult terrain and can only serve the customers within their geographical reach.
Increased demand for natural gas in combination with reductions in construction cost of liquefaction and LNG ships has resulted, over the past decade, in significant growth in world LNG trade.

Increasingly, new LNG buyers are less creditworthy than the traditionally strong monopoly utility and energy company buyers which supported the first generation of LNG sales.
"Buyers are increasingly less willing or able to interpose large balance sheets between themselves and their resale market risks, thus requiring sellers to expand significant resources to understand the risk and then to identify strategies for their mitigation. How can sellers protect themselves from these risks?" she asked.