The Role Of Natural Gas in the Worldwide Energetic Scenarios

By

S. Fomiatti¹

(1) ENI SpA - Agip Division, S. Donato Milanese, Italy

 The world natural gas consumption continues to grow, increasing its market share of total primary energy consumption. For the energetic countries, natural gas is expected to provide the greatest increase in energy consumption, among the major fuels, due to the use in industrial sectors and the electric power generation. Global gas reserves have doubled over the past 20 years. The gas reserves are the largest energetic basin and, on the base of the total amount, could represent the feedstock of several industries processes. The gas utilisation options shows the chemical streams, as urea, ammonia, MTBE and methanol and, for huge amount of gas reserves, LNG & GTL products. In the wide range of gas reserves, there are interest opportunities for the gas to be used as fuel for Power Generation Plants. Electricity can be produced using different kinds of fuel. The production of electricity through combined cycle power plants, with high thermodynamic efficiencies and low pollution into the atmosphere, will increase the use of gas in both repowering and new plants. The paper illustrates the following topics: strategic gas role in the energetic scenarios, use of gas in industrial business and for power generation in the past, in the near and long term, evolution of the technologies on the base of gas availability. On the whole, this paper aims at meeting the operators’ expectations of the gas and energetic sectors, wishing to get a comprehensive view of the growth prospects for gas in the world-wide business.