Gas price to soar as CNG takes over

Compressed Natural Gas will take over from LNG within the next 15 years as the main way to transport gas in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.

Professor Michael Economides, who used to be a senior adviser to Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky before his imprisonment, made the prediction at last week’s Mare Forum conference on energy in Athens. For short distances of less than 2,000 km and for relatively small loads of up to 10M cubic metres, LNG simply cannot compare with CNG, he said. This is because the entire investment is essentially in the ships themselves, which he called “floating pipelines”, while the cost of building CNG terminals is trivial. The main message of the conference was that in spite of the political rhetoric on alternative energy sources, oil, gas and coal will dominate the world energy demand for the next hundred years, and the benefit of shipping will remain undiminished. Economides also predicted that Russia would be unable to meet its commitments for gas supply to Europe and China because its system was mismanaged and it was practically impossible for the infrastructure to be built on time. As a result, he said, by 2010 there are going to be 100Bn cubic metres of shortfall of Russian gas for Europe.
Read More