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Primary Energy Consumption: Natural Gas
These notes are intended to accompany the slide presentation entitled ‘Primary Energy Consumption:
Natural Gas’ available from The Gaia Project at www.thegaiaproject.ca.
For more information, please contact brian.mccain@thegaiaproject.ca
OECD refers to the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development. OECD countries are
generally those countries that are considered to be developed (such as Canada, US, Europe, Australia,
Japan), while non‐OECD countries are developing nations (such as China, India, all of Africa).
Slide Number Description
1 Title
These slides show graphs of a variety of indicators related to primary energy both
regionally and globally.
Primary energy refers to energy that can be found naturally and has not been subject
to any sort of man‐made conversion process. Therefore, it includes energy sources
such as coal, wind and hydro, but not electricity since this is produced from primary
energy sources.
There are a large number of graphs contained in this package, and it is not essential to
understand each one in detail. Instead, when viewed together, they provide an overall
indication of where we were and where we are now in terms of energy consumption.
2 Natural Gas
Like crude oil, natural gas is formed through the compression of dead organic sea
based matter. Different matter and conditions result in natural gas and oil, although
they are often found together.
While natural gas has a significant amount of carbon in it, it also contains a significant
amount of hydrogen. Both of these elements combust to release energy, the carbon
forming CO2 and the hydrogen forming water.
Since a large part of the energy released by natural gas comes from hydrogen burning
to form water, it is the cleanest of all of the fossil fuels, releasing significantly less CO2
per unit of energy than either coal or oil.
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Slide Number Description
3 Annual Global Natural Gas Consumption
Like coal and oil, natural gas use has grown massively over the past 40 years. The rate
of growth has eclipsed both coal and oil, and we now use roughly six times the
amount of gas we used in 1965, or roughly 3 trillion m3 of gas per year.
4 Annual Global Natural Gas Consumption – OECD versus Non‐OECD
Growth in Non‐OECD countries has been large, as was the case with oil and coal.
However, growth has also been high in OECD countries, due to the fact that the fuel is
very flexible and easily transported.
5 Annual Regional Natural Gas Consumption
With coal and oil, we saw that North America was responsible for increases in usage
in OECD countries. With natural gas, the increase has been global, but none more so
that in Europe.
Europe lacks the large quantities of local resources (coal and oil) that we have in
North America, and their dense population makes extracting what remains very
difficult.
Natural gas travels easily via pipeline from the North Sea and Russia, and has been
used extensively in the power generation industry for a number of decades now due
it’s relatively low cost (at the time) and flexible properties.
6 Natural Gas Price
Natural gas has not been immune to the price increases that have affected oil and
coal.
7 Natural Gas Price – Corrected for inflation
Correcting for inflation, we can see that recent prices are well above the historical
trend.
Currently, natural gas cost roughly $8.50 / GJ, in comparison with oil at $16 / GJ and
coal at $4 / GJ.
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Slide Number Description
8 Annual Global Natural Gas Consumption and New Discoveries
Like oil, natural gas is a finite resource, and eventually new discoveries will drop
below the level of consumption meaning that we will begin to reduce global reserves.
Global estimates of recoverable natural gas are much more certain that oil, largely
due to the political climate of the countries where it is present.
9 Global Gas Reserve / Consumption Ratio
Like the graph for oil, this gives a very crude estimate of the number of years of
natural gas remaining. It doesn’t decrease steadily because we keep discovering more
gas, but that will come to an end.
Currently, it’s estimated that we have roughly 40 years of oil remaining, 65 years of
natural gas remaining, and a couple of hundred years of coal remaining.
10 Global gas production and consumption
Like oil, a time will come when production begins to decrease as reserves run dry, and
at this point consumption will have to follow demand. This will be known as Peak Gas,
but is not considered to be as imminent a threat as Peak Oil.
February 24, 2010 3 realistic environmentalism
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